By John Lancaster
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 10, 2001; Page A05
Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter was convinced he could have altered the outcome of the 5 to 4 decision that tipped the presidential election to George W. Bush had he been given just "one more day" in which to make his case to a wavering Anthony M. Kennedy, Newsweek magazine reported yesterday.
Souter made the claim in a meeting with prep school students in January, a month after the court rejected an appeal by Vice President Al Gore to continue a vote recount in Florida, according to the magazine's account.
The account -- excerpted from a book, "The Accidental President," by Newsweek writer David A. Kaplan -- challenges statements by some justices in the aftermath of the decision that they had put the matter behind them and were once again enjoying cordial relations.
It describes Souter and the three colleagues who joined him in dissent -- Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens -- as angered and baffled by the majority opinion.
Their emotions boiled to the surface in January when Breyer told a delegation of visiting Russian justices, as his colleagues looked on, that the court's decision was "the most outrageous, indefensible thing" it had ever done, according to the account.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

Hearing before the Senate Rules Committee
June 27, 2001
(Submitted July 10, 2001)
By LaShawn Warren, Legislative Counsel
The Voting Rights Act of 2001 is the most comprehensive response to a widespread problem that was largely hidden until last November. The objective of this legislation is to begin to provide relief to voters before the 2002 federal elections--and full equality by 2004. It will meet the three principal goals of election reform: uniformity, accuracy, and accessibility. The bill sets uniform performance standards for voting equipment, promotes accuracy by upgrading technology and allowing voters to correct any balloting errors, and ensures accessibility and convenience for all voters, including language minorities and persons with disabilities.

If they succeed it doesn`t give bush much time, so can we expect to see some more big happenings before then?


After delays caused, in part, by repeated Republican challenges, the board had ordered a county-wide hand recount. The partially completed recount showed Vice President Al Gore cutting into Bush's lead by 157 votes, with the potential of giving Gore enough votes in Dade County alone to erase Bush's 930-vote lead.
But faced with the Florida Supreme Court's deadline of Sunday for submission of new figures, the board decided to forsake its full recount. That negated Gore's unofficial 157-vote gain.
The board decided to review only the 10,000 disputed ballots for which counting machines had failed to detect a vote for president. Still, the Gore camp hoped those disputed ballots would supply a substantial net gain for the vice president.
However, confronted by shouting pro-Bush partisans – many from Miami's hard-line Cuban-American community – the board reversed itself again. It halted the recount entirely and reverted back to the original count that had most favored Bush.
Nevertheless, Bush would get the presidency -- and the chance to preside over a system of governance that he seems to barely comprehend.