Brushing aside their sworn duty to uphold the right of voters to cast their ballots and have their votes counted, the right-wing majority of the U.S. Supreme Court Dec. 12 halted a recount of votes in Florida, in essence certifying George W. Bush as the winner of the 2000 presidential election.

The high court split down the middle, 5-4, in reversing the Florida Supreme Court’s Dec. 8 order that a recount of an estimated 60,000 so-called "undervote" ballots be resumed.

Resorting to weasel-wording, the high court majority did not outright rule against the recount. Instead it remanded to the Florida Supreme Court with the stipulation that any recount must be completed by Dec. 12, the deadline for certification of votes by the states. Since the deadline was the very day of their ruling, it was tantamount to a reversal.

"Because it is evident that any recount seeking to meet the Dec. 12 date will be unconstitutional," the ruling stated, "we reverse the judgment of the Florida Supreme Court ordering the recount to proceed." Voting to halt the recount were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and associate justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

In a stinging dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens denounced the high court ruling as a "frontal assault" on Florida’s election laws and the voters of Florida.

"Although we may never know with any complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear," wrote Stevens.

"It is the nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the law." Joining in that dissent were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer.

The Supreme Court bowed to the Bush campaign in agreeing to hear their appeal against Florida’s recount of "undervote" ballots, in which voting machines had not counted the ballots because a vote for president was not clear.

The Bush forces were in a panic when the Florida high court ordered a hand recount after Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris’ certification.

Adding those votes had already cut Bush’s margin to less than 200 out of six million votes cast in the Sunshine State. The recount of 19,000 Miami-Dade undervote ballots at the Leon County Public Library in Tallahassee had been proceeding so smoothly that it would have been finished by Dec. 8. Preliminary reports had indicated that the recount had already added many more votes to Democrat Al Gore’s total.

A recount was also being organized in many other counties, although some Republican-dominated canvassing boards had joined in the Bush-Cheney stalling strategy of running out the clock. Also panicked by Bush’s vanishing vote margin was the Republican-dominated Florida Legislature, which hastily convened a rump session to ram through a slate of Bush electors even though Gov. Jeb Bush and Harris had already submitted the names of 25 Bush-Cheney electors to the Electoral College in Washington.

In an interview outside the Florida House chamber in Tallahassee, Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Palm Beach County), minority leader of the Florida House, said the legislature’s hasty action was "illegal" and "usurped" Florida’s six million voters.

The Florida Supreme Court’s 4-3 ruling Dec. 8 was eloquent in ordering a recount of the undervote not only in Miami-Dade but for the entire state of Florida, a decision fully embraced by the Gore-Lieberman campaign.

"This election should be determined by a careful examination of the votes of Florida’s citizens and not by strategies extraneous to the voting process," they wrote.

"This essential principle, that the outcome of elections be determined by the will of the voters forms the foundation of the election code enacted by the Florida Legislature and has been consistently applied by this court in resolving elections disputes. We are dealing with the essence of the structure of our democratic society."