Ruling may come down to 1 woman: O'Connor

©Associated Press

© St. Petersburg Times, published December 11, 2000

WASHINGTON -- Some 100-million voters cast ballots for president on Election Day, but one voter ultimately may decide the whole thing: Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

O'Connor, a Republican who has provided the fifth vote for a host of important high court decisions, again joined the 5-4 majority in stopping the hand count of ballots across Florida, as Republican George W. Bush had requested.

But Supreme Court observers believe she is the jurist most likely to switch sides after oral arguments are heard today in the case likely to decide whether Bush or Democrat Al Gore becomes the nation's next president.

"O'Connor is often seeking a way of coming down between the two wings of the court," said A.E. Dick Howard, an expert on the Supreme Court at the University of Virginia.

By siding with the majority on Saturday, she indicated that she thinks Bush has a good chance of winning. But that doesn't lock her in, Howard said.

"Even if it's uphill, the Gore attorneys have a fighting chance of dislodging O'Connor from that block."

In recent years, she has helped lead what some see as a revolutionary return of power to the states.

That leads some to reason that O'Connor might back the Florida Supreme Court in its decision to allow the hand counting of ballots that may have been missed during a machine tally. Others say this case is not about states' rights, but the interpretation of federal law.

The court has strong liberal and conservative wings that are frequently at odds, often leaving the deciding vote to O'Connor and, to a lesser extent, Justice Anthony Kennedy, another Reagan appointee who also could prove pivotal in the Florida case.

In the court's last term, O'Connor cast only four dissenting votes out of 73 signed opinions -- the fewest of any on the nine-member court. And in 21 cases decided 5-4, she was in the majority 19 times.

In any case, it may not be so crazy if the ultimate decision comes down to just one woman, said Daniel Polsby, a law professor at George Mason University.

"The country is divided every which way," he said. "What could be more emblematic than having the thing decided by one vote?"

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