Comments | tongodeon: Activist Judge Nullifies 2.25% of Californian Voters Wishes

tongodeon

Activist Judge Nullifies 2.25% of Californian Voters Wishes

Aug 04, 2010 18:08

A common lament from conservatives is that today's ruling "nullifies the votes of more than 7 million California voters".

No it doesn't.

Prop 8 was a fairly close vote, with large numbers on both sides. 7,001,084 people voted in favor of Prop 8 and 6,401,482 voted against it. In the end, the votes of 7 million people nullified the votes of more ( Read more... )

Comments 8

tensegritydan August 5 2010, 01:24:06 UTC

Math fail is only one of the many fails of Prop 8 supporters (which you enumerated so well in your last post).

mister_borogove August 5 2010, 02:32:44 UTC

Sure, but the 6.4 million people who voted against 8 are homo-loving commies, quite possibly terrorists, and in any case, by definition, not Real Americans.

hwrnmnbsol August 5 2010, 02:34:45 UTC

Seven million votes or two hundred thousand -- does it matter? Judges nullifying bad laws is what they are there to do. That's their purpose. Judges sift human experience and separate out justice from injustice. If that makes them 'activists', then Activate Ahoy.

We have judges precisely because the founders of our government recognized that, while all people are created equal, things happen after you are born that make some people more qualified to tell right from wrong. If they have to be more qualified than seven million people, then that just shows that their selection was a correct one.

mmcirvin August 5 2010, 03:05:54 UTC

I'm not sure this is a good road to go down. By the same kind of analysis, Bush v. Gore only nullified the votes of a few hundred people.

The real difference is that the constitutional reasoning in Bush v. Gore was stupid. I'd be in favor of the judicial overturning of Prop. 8 even if it passed by a gigantic margin.

tongodeon August 5 2010, 04:30:12 UTC

Actually I wrote and took out a parenthetical in my post about just that. Bush v. Gore *did* nullify the votes of only a few hundred people. It bugs me just as much to hear people keep flogging that decision as if the courts had overturned some clear mandate from the electorate rather than decided a hair-thin toss-up based on pure partisanship.

ikkyu2 August 5 2010, 03:09:05 UTC

Nobody's vote was nullified. Voting on a proposition that is unconstitutional doesn't generate valid votes, so there were no valid votes to nullify.

tensegritydan August 5 2010, 23:19:52 UTC

+1

Civil rights are not a popularity contest.