The equal protection issue arose because different localities within Florida were using different specific standards to determine whether to count a ballot as having a valid vote. Some localities, for example, required a chad to be punctured so that light could pass through it in order for it to count as a vote — a position known colloquially as the “sunshine” standard. Other localities, by contrast, were willing to count a chad even if it was only dimpled and thus would fail the “sunshine” standard. Even within the same locality, moreover, different recount teams were applying different standards.

All seven of the justices who saw validity to Bush’s equal protection claim also recognized that there necessarily would be limits to the scope of the equal protection principle on which that claim relied. The issue of whether it would violate equal protection for different localities within a state to use different types of voting technologies arose during oral argument and, however that issue might be resolved, it pointed to the proverbial slippery slope. What about different polling hours in different localities in the same election? Different numbers of voting machines, or poll workers, per capita for the voting population of each locality in the state? Different length of wait times? And so on. It was inevitable that there would be difficult line-drawing issues, no matter how the court ruled on any particular set of facts. Which is precisely why the court’s opinion included the warning: “Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities.”

Globally, inequality is so extreme that the world’s 10 richest men possess more wealth than the 3.1 billion poorest people, Oxfam has calculated.

<p>The rich tend to spend less of their money than the poor. As a result, the extreme concentration of wealth can slow the pace of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-923X.12237">economic growth</a>.</p> <p>Extreme inequality can also exacerbate <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674980822">political dysfunction</a> and <a href="https://ideas.ted.com/the-4-biggest-reasons-why-inequality-is-bad-for-society/">undermine faith</a> in political and economic systems. It can also erode principles of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-020-09697-z">fairness and democratic norms of sharing power and resources</a>.</p>

Statewide, based upon county-level statistical estimates, black voters were nearly 10 times more likely than nonblack voters to have their ballots rejected.

Estimates indicate that approximately 14.4 percent of Florida's black voters cast ballots that were rejected. This compares with approximately 1.6 percent of nonblack Florida voters who did not have their presidential votes counted.

Mr. Nasaw is the author of “Andrew Carnegie” and “The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy.”