From Bush v.

« legal requirements. This case has shown that punch card balloting machines can produce an unfortunate number of ballots which are not punched in a clean, complete way by the voter.After the current counting, it is likely legislative bodies nationwide will examine ways to improve the mechanisms and machinery for voting. B The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses astatewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the Electoral College.

U.

S.

Const., Art.

II, §1.

This is the source for the statement inMcPherson v.

Blacke r, 146 U.

S.

1, 35 (1892), that the State legislature’s power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself, which indeed was the manner used by State legislatures in several States for many years after the Framing of our Constitution.

Id., at 28–33. History has now favored the voter, and in each of the several States the citizens themselves vote for Presidential electors.

When the state legislature vests the right tovote for President in its people, the right to vote as the legislature has prescribed is fundamental; and one source of its fundamental nature lies in the equal weightaccorded to each vote and the equal dignity owed to each voter.

The State, of course, after granting the franchise in the special context of Article II, can take back thepower to appoint electors.

See id., at 35 (“[T]here is no doubt of the right of the legislature to resume the power at any time, for it can neither be taken away nor abdicated”) (quoting S.

Rep.

No.

395, 43d Cong., 1st Sess.). The right to vote is protected in more than the initial allocation of the franchise.

Equal protection applies as well to the manner of its exercise.

Having once grantedthe right to vote on equal terms, the State may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person's vote over that of another.

See, e.g., Harper v. Virginia Bd.

of Elections, 383 U.

S.

663, 665 (1966) (“[O]nce the franchise is granted to the electorate, lines may not be drawn which are inconsistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment”).

It must be remembered that “the right of suffrage can be denied by a debasement or dilution of the weight of acitizen’s vote just as effectively as by wholly prohibiting the free exercise of the franchise.” Reynolds v.

Sims, 377 U.

S.

533, 555 (1964). There is no difference between the two sides of the present controversy on these basic propositions.

Respondents say that the very purpose of vindicating the right tovote justifies the recount procedures now at issue.

The question before us, however, is whether the recount procedures the Florida Supreme Court has adopted areconsistent with its obligation to avoid arbitrary and disparate treatment of the members of its electorate. Much of the controversy seems to revolve around ballot cards designed to be perforated by a stylus but which, either through error or deliberate omission, have notbeen perforated with sufficient precision for a machine to count them.

In some cases a piece of the card—a chad—is hanging, say by two corners.

In other casesthere is no separation at all, just an indentation. The Florida Supreme Court has ordered that the intent of the voter be discerned from such ballots.

For purposes of resolving the equal protection challenge, it is notnecessary to decide whether the Florida Supreme Court had the authority under the legislative scheme for resolving election disputes to define what a legal vote isand to mandate a manual recount implementing that definition.

The recount mechanisms implemented in response to the decisions of the Florida Supreme Court donot satisfy the minimum requirement for non-arbitrary treatment of voters necessary to secure the fundamental right.

Florida’s basic command for the count of legallycast votes is to consider the “intent of the voter.” Gore v.

Harri s, ___ So.

2d, at ___ (slip op., at 39).

This is unobjectionable as an abstract proposition and a starting principle.

The problem inheres in the absence of specific standards to ensure its equal application.

The formulation of uniform rules to determine intent based onthese recurring circumstances is practicable and, we conclude, necessary. The law does not refrain from searching for the intent of the actor in a multitude of circumstances; and in some cases the general command to ascertain intent is notsusceptible to much further refinement.

In this instance, however, the question is not whether to believe a witness but how to interpret the marks or holes or scratcheson an inanimate object, a piece of cardboard or paper which, it is said, might not have registered as a vote during the machine count.

The factfinder confronts a thing,not a person.

The search for intent can be confined by specific rules designed to ensure uniform treatment. The want of those rules here has led to unequal evaluation of ballots in various respects.

See Gore v.

Harris, ___ So.

2d, at ___ (slip op., at 51) (Wells, J., dissenting) (“Should a county canvassing board count or not count a ‘dimpled chad’ where the voter is able to successfully dislodge the chad in every other contest on thatballot? Here, the county canvassing boards disagree”).

As seems to have been acknowledged at oral argument, the standards for accepting or rejecting contestedballots might vary not only from county to county but indeed within a single county from one recount team to another. The record provides some examples.

A monitor in Miami-Dade County testified at trial that he observed that three members of the county canvassing board applieddifferent standards in defining a legal vote.

3 Tr.

497, 499 (Dec.

3, 2000).

And testimony at trial also revealed that at least one county changed its evaluativestandards during the counting process.

Palm Beach County, for example, began the process with a 1990 guideline which precluded counting completely attachedchads, switched to a rule that considered a vote to be legal if any light could be seen through a chad, changed back to the 1990 rule, and then abandoned any pretenseof a per se rule, only to have a court order that the county consider dimpled chads legal.

This is not a process with sufficient guarantees of equal treatment. An early case in our one person, one vote jurisprudence arose when a State accorded arbitrary and disparate treatment to voters in its different counties.

Gray v. Sander s, 372 U.

S.

368 (1963).

The Court found a constitutional violation.

We relied on these principles in the context of the Presidential selection process in Moore v.

Ogilvie, 394 U.

S.

814 (1969), where we invalidated a county-based procedure that diluted the influence of citizens in larger counties in the nominating process. There we observed that “[t]he idea that one group can be granted greater voting strength than another is hostile to the one man, one vote basis of our representativegovernment.” Id., at 819. The State Supreme Court ratified this uneven treatment. It mandated that the recount totals from two counties, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach, be included in the certified total.

The court also appeared to hold sub silentio that the recount totals from Broward County, which were not completed until after the original November 14 certification by the Secretary of State, were to be considered part of the new certified vote totals even though the county certification was not contested by VicePresident Gore.

Yet each of the counties used varying standards to determine what was a legal vote.

Broward County used a more forgiving standard than PalmBeach County, and uncovered almost three times as many new votes, a result markedly disproportionate to the difference in population between the counties. In addition, the recounts in these three counties were not limited to so-called undervotes but extended to all of the ballots.

The distinction has real consequences.

Amanual recount of all ballots identifies not only those ballots which show no vote but also those which contain more than one, the so-called overvotes.

Neithercategory will be counted by the machine.

This is not a trivial concern.

At oral argument, respondents estimated there are as many as 110,000 overvotes statewide.

Asa result, the citizen whose ballot was not read by a machine because he failed to vote for a candidate in a way readable by a machine may still have his vote countedin a manual recount; on the other hand, the citizen who marks two candidates in a way discernable by the machine will not have the same opportunity to have his votecount, even if a manual examination of the ballot would reveal the requisite indicia of intent.

Furthermore, the citizen who marks two candidates, only one of which isdiscernable by the machine, will have his vote counted even though it should have been read as an invalid ballot.

The State Supreme Court’s inclusion of vote countsbased on these variant standards exemplifies concerns with the remedial processes that were under way. That brings the analysis to yet a further equal protection problem.

The votes certified by the court included a partial total from one county, Miami-Dade.

The FloridaSupreme Court’s decision thus gives no assurance that the recounts included in a final certification must be complete.

Indeed, it is respondent’s submission that itwould be consistent with the rules of the recount procedures to include whatever partial counts are done by the time of final certification, and we interpret the Florida. »