Challenge to paperless voting in Florida OK to proceed.The Eleventh Circuit unanimously ruled that a district court could not abstain from abstain from verb refrain from, avoid, decline, give up, stop, refuse, cease, do without, shun, renounce, eschew, leave off, keep from, forgo, withhold from, forbear, desist from, deny yourself, kick ( hearing a case involving paperless voting machines in Florida. (Wexler v. LaPore, No. 04-12826 (11th Cir. Sept. 27, 2004).) CCL 1. CCL - Coral Common LISP. 2. CCL - Computer Control Language. English-like query language based on COLINGO, for IBM 1401 and IBM 1410. worked with Jeff Liggio, an ATLA ATLA Association of Trial Lawyers of America ATLA American Theological Library Association ATLA American Trial Lawyers Association ATLA Air Transport Licensing Authority (Hong Kong) ATLA Avatar: The Last Airbender governor from the state, to represent U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), two county commissioners, and a voter who filed a federal constitutional challenge to the paperless touch-screen voting machines used in 15 Florida counties. Under Florida law, when an election is decided by less than one-half of 1 percent of all votes, there must be an automatic, manual recount. The touch-screen systems in the 15 counties do not produce a paper record of votes that can be used in a manual recount, unlike the optical-scan voting machines used in the state's other 52 counties. The plaintiffs argued that this "nonuniform, differential standard" violates their rights to due process and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment Fourteenth Amendment, addition to the U.S. Constitution, adopted 1868. The amendment comprises five sections. Section 1 Section 1 of the amendment declares that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are American citizens and citizens . Wexler had filed a separate suit in state court, but that claim was based exclusively on state law. The district court believed that this suit triggered the abstention doctrine The concept under which a federal court exercises its discretion and equitable powers and declines to decide a legal action over which it has jurisdiction pursuant to the Constitution and statutes where the state judiciary is capable of rendering a definitive ruling in the matter. : that a parallel action in state court prevented a separate federal constitutional challenge. CCL argued that parallel challenges to a law in federal and stale courts are always permitted. The Eleventh Circuit agreed with this argument that the federal decision on the full constitutional issue was not considered interference with the state proceedings. "Should the district court have abstained ... just because of a pending state civil action where appellants raised exclusively state law claims arising from the same facts at issue in the federal action? We conclude the answer is 'no,'" wrote Judge James Edmondson for the appellate court A court having jurisdiction to review decisions of a trial-level or other lower court. An unsuccessful party in a lawsuit must file an appeal with an appellate court in order to have the decision reviewed. , which remanded the case to the district court to be heard on the merits on the merits adj. referring to a judgment, decision or ruling of a court based upon the facts presented in evidence and the law applied to that evidence. A judge decides a case "on the merits" when he/she bases the decision on the fundamental issues and considers . "We are discussing the next steps with our clients in get the case resolved by the elections in November," Bob Peck, CCL president, said at press time. |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion