Common sense descended into the American Zoo — a federal court stopped the 2016 Michigan presidential election recount

© 2016 Peter Free

 

08 December 2016

 

 

The question — who let Jill Stein's interfering incompetence loose?

 

For some days, I could not calculate an honorable reason why the Green Party's Jill Stein was trying to force 2016 presidential election recounts in three American states.

 

Nor could I concoct a good reason why she should be allowed to do so on the merits of her own irrelevant candidacy.

 

What did supposedly questionable election outcomes have to do with Dr. Stein's vanishingly small vote totals?

 

 

Then suddenly — sanity stumbled into Michigan

 

Michigan's Court of Appeals had the same questions that I did. It found against Stein on the basis of existing Michigan law. And yesterday, the immediately involved federal district court agreed with the state appellate court.

 

This outcome was as it should be, given the fact that state law governs outcomes in cases of this kind. See page 6 of the District Court's order. As a result, Federal District Judge Mark Goldsmith threw out Dr. Stein's taxpayer-expensive circus act.

 

 

The reason?

 

American courts generally make it a policy not to hear cases whose outcomes do not matter to the filing party. Why waste money and court time with nonsensical disputes?

 

 

Under Michigan law, Jill Stein could not possibly have been an "aggrieved" party to this alleged dispute.

 

A recount would not have affected her own invisibly-behind-the-dust-cloud election outcome.

 

Stein had no reasonable stake in this manufactured dispute.

 

 

The moral? — Work-a-day courts are too frequently the United States' last bastion of sense

 

"Ordinary" judicial people have to get things reliably done — unlike a disturbingly large swath of American Government.

 

Amazingly, in our era of demented unreason, these courts try to do their jobs, without making facts up or uncritically gobbling propaganda.

 

Competent legislatures help them by crafting sensible statutes for the judiciary to work from.

 

The combination is called effective governance.

 

Thank you, Your Honors.