When it comes to interpreting elections, it sounds like you're a fundamentalist, Ruy, but what about the campaign itself?
In any event, Mr. Tribe said, the Florida Legislature had given the state courts the authority to interpret election law for all elections except their own.
Indeed, it is his party loyalty in the midst of the partisan rancor over ballot-counting in the state that has made the Bush campaign openly critical of Mr. Butterworth's efforts to interpret election law.
Even if he did, the government's grip on the media, combined with a harshly and arbitrarily interpreted election law, means that it would have been hard for anyone else to have a fair crack at the prize.
No doubt political defeat in the midterms will bolster party strategists who interpret election results as a repudiation of the Audacity of Hope in favor of the Tenacity of Nope, at least for likely voters.
Section 5, like Article II, assumes the involvement of the state judiciary in interpreting state election laws and resolving election disputes under those laws.
If the Florida court revises its ruling to make clear it was merely interpreting established election statutes and was not rewriting the laws after the election in possible violation of federal law, there is unlikely to be any federal issue that would warrant further review by the United States Supreme Court.
But that same decision also said that a state supreme court ruling interpreting state election laws was a local matter not subject to federal review.
The test measured workplace skills, like interpreting simple election results or figuring out how many rows of candles were in a box.
The argument in Bush v. Gore that state courts have a sharply circumscribed role in interpreting state election procedures derived from the Constitution's Article II, which governs the presidency and provides that a state's presidential electors shall be appointed "in such manner as the legislature thereof shall direct".
