If you’re as much of a courtroom junkie as I am, you’ll dig these clips from yesterday of Judge Alex Kozinski and Andrew J. Kleinfeld.
(A friend filled me in on who Kleinfeld was. I only recognized Alex Kozinski because he was at the moot court at the Spectrum Policy Conference last March.)
Clip #1 is from CNN‘s “Inside Politics” and contains Kozinski as he questions one of the lawyers.
Clip #2 is also from CNN’s “Inside Politics” and contains analysis from a couple of the show’s stock pundits.
Clip #3 is from CNN’s “Crossfire” and includes footage of Kozinski and Andrew J. Kleinfeld as they question the lawyers.
These are all from September 23, 2003.
Clip #1: Justice Alex Kozinski on CNN’s Inside Politics.

Justice Kozinski On CNN (Small – 10 MB)


Clip #2: Pundit analysis of the CA Recall from CNN’s Inside Politcs.

Inside Politics On The CA Recall (Small – 14 MB)
Clip #3: Justices Kozinski and Kleinfeld questioning the lawyers.

9th Circuit Court Of Appeals On The CA Recall (Small – 8 MB)

One More Round For Bush v. Gore
By Charles Lane for the Washington Post.

Bush v. Gore held for the first time that the Constitution’s equal protection clause, which protects citizens from arbitrarily disparate treatment at the hands of state authorities, can be applied to the methods states use to tally votes. Previously, election methods had been thought to be mostly the province of state officials.
The court ruled that a statewide manual recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court to account for uncounted punch-card ballots, many of which were marred by “hanging chads” and the like, would be conducted according to wildly varying rules, making it impossible for the state to treat everyone equally within the short time available.
For the liberal interest groups and lawyers who have been fighting California’s recall, Bush v. Gore has mutated from reviled electoral coup to legitimate legal weapon.
If the case means anything, they argue, it means that the Constitution forbids states from arbitrarily counting different voters’ ballots differently. That includes setting up an election in which one technology, the punch-card machines, would subject a sizeable percentage of voters — among whom are a disproportionate number of minorities — to a greater risk of having their ballots discounted than other voters.
Indeed, yesterday’s ruling flowed from earlier litigation, since settled, in which groups used Bush v. Gore to win a promise from the state that all its punch-card machines would be replaced by March 2004, when the state will hold Republican and Democratic primaries.
The 9th Circuit noted that, according to experts, about 40,000 out of the several million expected to vote in the recall election would lose out because of the normal 2.23 percent error rate in the punch-card technology. Those voters would tend to come from six heavily minority counties containing 44 percent of the state’s voters, whereas 56 percent of the state’s voting population would get the benefit of machines with an error rate of no more than 0.89 percent.
Such discrepancies would probably not have risen to the level of a federal issue in the past, but 2000 changed all that, the 9th Circuit ruled.
“If we had brought the punch-card case to court before Bush v. Gore, you’d likely see the courts say, ‘No, states have to have some leeway,’ ” said Rick Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who aided the American Civil Liberties Union in the case. “But if it doesn’t apply here, it doesn’t apply anywhere.”

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Bravo! Bravo! I must say, I am pleasantly surprised by this thoughtful ruling by the 9th District Court of Appeals.
(Too bad the Supreme Court wasn’t as thoughtful in the 2000 presidential election.)

Appeals court blocks California recall
By Bob Franken and Kelly Wallace for CNN.

The ruling follows a hearing last week at which the American Civil Liberties Union argued that election officials should have more time to replace antiquated voting machines in several California counties.
The ACLU said the punch-card system could disenfranchise voters in six counties, including Los Angeles, the state’s largest. Those six counties include 44 percent of state voters and have heavy concentrations of minority voters.
A lower court last month had rejected the request, but the appeals court disagreed.
“In sum, in assessing the public interest, the balance falls heavily in favor of postponing the election for a few months,” the court concluded, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore decision that settled the 2000 presidential election.
“The choice between holding a hurried, constitutionally infirm election and one held a short time later that assures voters that the ‘rudimentary requirements of equal treatment and fundamental fairness are satisfied’ is clear.”
Mark Rosenbaum, a lawyer for the ACLU, called the decision “a masterpiece.”

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This is from KGO Channel 7 News in San Francisco on September 8, 2003.
Turns out you can vote early — like NOW — in the recall election, if you want to.
Here’s more:
ABC Channel 7 News On Voting Early In the Recall (Small – 8 MB)