It's No Stretch to Envision Election Tied Up in Court

Prospect of legal challenges to voting are hardly far-fetched
By Nick McMaster,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 30, 2008 1:32 PM CDT
It's No Stretch to Envision Election Tied Up in Court
"If you have a state where the outcome is unclear ... that state has to be one that keeps a candidate from going over 270 electoral votes,%u201D says Jeffrey Toobin. %u201COdds against that are extremely high.%u201D   (AP Photo)

At long last, the election is almost over—or is it? After the Florida fiasco in 2000, it’s anyone’s guess as to how long legal wrangling over a close race could last, Adam Reilly writes in the Boston Phoenix. A likely target for post-election litigation is ACORN and its run of phony registrations—especially since the Republican Party has already made it an issue.

The 2002 Help America Vote Act was supposed to prevent a replay of 2000, but because implementation was left up to the states, crucial questions of protocol for registration or provisional ballots remain open to legal challenges. “HAVA is so new,” says an election-law specialist “and provisional voting under HAVA is so new, that, in intense litigation, almost any plausible argument is potentially in play.” (More Election 2008 stories.)

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