The Supreme Court and Elections

With presidential elections, you are electing the head of the executive branch. The legislature can play a role in selecting the president when there is no majority in electoral votes received by any candidate. It was not thought that the other branch of government in the U.S., the judicial branch, could play a major role (except with voting laws), until the 2000 election of course. As everyone knows, the entire 2000 presidential election came down to the state of Florida in 2000, and arguments of whether there should have been a recount in Florida raged on in court. Eventually the case made it up all the way to the Supreme Court, and by a 5-4 margin, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bush and the recount was stopped and Bush essentially won the state of Florida and the presidency. (This case is none other than Bush vs. Gore). So this year, as the race for the White House rages on, I found an interesting article regarding the Supreme Court and this presidential election year. This case involves a conservative group (Citizens United) wanting to play a 90-minute video that would essentially be negative for Hillary Clinton. However, the group argues that this 90 minute documentary would not be considered a commercial, and thus they do not have to disclose their contributers. However, lower courts ruled that the ads were political speech, and they needed to disclose their contributers. The case was denied a hearing by the Supreme Court, and is now in the hands of the lower court. While this is not as exciting or blood wrenching as the 2000 Supreme Court case, it still shows the Supreme Court can have some clout in an election year.

Another example of the court having some clout in an election year is after the 1876 election, when Hayes and Tilden were in a battle after the election over who really won. An independent commission was set up by Congress to figure out what to do with some disputed electoral votes in a number of states. On this commission, it included none other than 5 Supreme Court Justices. So it is quite interesting to see how sometimes, the Supreme Court can come into play in presidential elections.

Note: The article where I obtained this information from was at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23779040/
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/24/scotus.clinton.movie/index.html