Overview: The election between Bush and Gore is so close
that the difference in votes in Florida is actually less than the margin of error for most sorts of counting of votes. This
has led to major legal battles on several fronts, as the
candidates argue for their votes. Finally, Bush won, but with the unusual step of a divided Supreme Court ruling in his favor

The 2000 Presidential Campaign: Post Election

The President Elect of the United States was not elected until 36 days after Election Day. Though George W. Bush was certified the winner and has enough electoral votes to carry the election in November, there were legal challenges in the state of Florida that could have tilted the election towards Al Gore.

The main problem is that the race was very close. Surprisingly, Al Gore won the popular vote, though he was a slightly behind in most polls (the polls were statistically tied). George W. Bush carried most of the South,but Florida, which was once assumed to be an easy Bush win, was very close.
On election day, Bush came out ahead, but by less than one half of one percent. An instant recount was ordered, as per Florida law. Then a number of stories came out. In Palm Beach County, a stronghold of the Democrats, Pat Buchanan, the far-right candidate of the Reform Party,received over 3000 votes. These votes were blamed on the butterfly ballot which may have confused some people into mis-voting. Gore claimed that such
ballots broke Florida law, which specified that ballots be designed in a certain way. However, on December 1st, The Florida Supreme Court has unanimously refused to order a new election in Palm Beach County, rejecting a plea from voters who contested the design of the county’s butterfly ballots.(Deutsch, p. 1).

Though the ballots probably were confusing, it is clear that most people understood them. Courts are loathe to overturn
elections, unless there are profound problems. It was also discovered that state police set up checkpoints near certain
polling places in predominantly black areas, which may have reduced turnout for this Democratic constituency. The police, for their part, claimed that their actions were divorced from the election. As the recount was completed, several other problems emerged. The voting machines do not perfectly count ballots, some were left unread, even though there were marks on the ballot. This happens very frequently, and many thousands of ballots are cast aside. Usually, this process is irrelevant,
if fewer ballots are thrown out than there are votes separating candidates. In this case, the race was so close that Al Gore asked for hand recounts in several Florida counties, counties where Democrats predominate. Bush balked at this, but rebuffed Gore’s offer to count all votes by hand. Instead, Bush spokesperson James Baker argued against the hand count,
saying that different people will read votes differently. The chad entered everyday language. Chads are the bit of paper left over from punching a ballot, and dimpled chads are those with an indentation. Most states have allowed dimpled chads to be counted, but some Florida counties refused to count such chads.
Additionally, the Florida Secretary Of State, who also happened to be Bush’s campaign co-chair in Florida, set a deadline which made hand recounts impossible to complete. She was forced to use discretion by a court, rather than indiscriminately rejecting these new counts, but turned all hand recounts down. She was then forced to extend her deadline by the Florida Supreme Court.
This led Bush to appeal to the US Supreme Court. His argument was that the Florida court could not make such a decision, and the court agreed.

Meanwhile, the hand recounts were handed in, with some exceptions, and Bush found himself the certified victor by fewer than 600 votes, or 1/100 of one percent of the total Florida vote. Gore returned to the Florida Supreme Court to get those final votes, which had already been counted twice by machine, counted by hand. Gore’s lawyers argue that votes of the rejected ballots could be detected by the human eye and that many of the votes in the heavily Democratic counties may yield more for votes for Gore. If included in a final tally, they say, the vice president could overtake Bush’s 537-vote lead and claim the presidency. Gore filed his case after Secretary of State Katherine Harris certified the Florida votes for Bush.(Associated Press, p.1).

With only a few days to go before the December 12th deadline, the Florida Supreme Court allowed the count to go ahead. An appeal to the Supreme Court by George W. Bush stopped that count, and just hours before the deadline, the Supreme Court ruled that the differing standards for handcounts violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. Again,they handed the case back to the Florida Supreme Court, but with the hand count now physically impossible to accomplish before the deadline, Gore finally conceded the race. There were also some side battles. Bush complained that Gore had tried to throw out absentee ballots set by members of the military. Lawsuits by
private citizens in Seminole County were issued, because ³Democrats have accused Republican election officials there with improperly completing some 1,700 to 2,250 absentee ballot applications and want all 15,000 of the county¹s absentee votes thrown out.² (Associated Press, p. 1). However,these votes were allowed to remain part of the total, in spite of the fact
that Republican votes were clearly treated differently than Democratic ones.

Gore could have fought on those grounds. He also could have fought the December 12th deadline. He did not however, because clearly the Supreme Court was split along partisan lines, with liberals and moderates voting for him, and the five conservatives against. The Supreme Court¹s decision, in
addition to being partisan, made little sense since it was not applied evenly. Republicans were allowed to manipulate ballot applications, and indeed, votes were treated differently all over the country. For example, New York and New Jersey use gear-switch voting machines, obviating the issues of dimpled chads and interpreting votes. Thus, by definition, a New York vote is more likely to count than a Florida vote. The Supreme Court did not defend the Equal Protection clause among the butterfly ballots either, but simply put an end to the tedious contest between candidates, for reasons that seem clearly partisan. Eventually though, some journalist will get access to those undervotes and we may discover that Gore should have
been President after all.

WORKS CITED