November 23, 2000
Florida State Supreme Court
Florida State Capitol
Tallahassee, Florida

Respected:

I’m curious if it is possible for different counting methods to yield different conclusions how can you justified changing or asking to change the counting method in one precinct without requiring it to be changed uniformly in all others? When tallies are lumped together, how can anyone honestly think that such picking and choosing arbitrarily is FAIR, DEMOCRATIC,, COMPETENT, INTELLIGENT, EQUALLY COUNTS EVERYONE’S VOTE, etc.?

How do you comply with the principle of equal protection of law if all votes are not handled and counted the same way, at least without proving that one area of the population is less intelligent, less capable of following instructions than another, that certain voting machines are out of adjustment (if so find them out and prove it), or if some other valid way significantly different to warrant special attention (cite it, prove it)?

Aren’t voters ALWAYS warned traditionally that if they don’t do it right their vote may not be counted? Doesn’t that responsibility belong to each other? What justification have you for not sticking to that warning? If a voter doesn’t do it right, they haven’t voted have they?

How can anyone truthfully determine voter intent when they either start to push and realize it is the wrong whole or otherwise change their mind and stop mid stream or else they hurriedly divert their attention to the next candidate and loss of concentration prevents them from following through with the punch? If there is any hole in the ballot, how can a dimple reflect voter intent?

How can any contest be made of the basis of machine error when the principles of probability suggest that the chance of machine error effecting one candidate’s votes is equal to the chance of it equally effecting the other candidate’s votes so that on a large unselected State-wide scale the percentages of machine votes is the same as the percentages of actual votes (especially if concurring recounts are on a different machine to preclude any claim of bias in particular counting machines)?

Anonymous Friend of Court
cc: Vice President
Florida Secratery [sic] of State