2000 United States presidential election in Florida, Counties that flipped from Democratic to Republican, Counties that flipped from Republican to Democratic, The previous closest statewide presidential elections were two in. Their chosen electors then vote for president and vice president. The results were 49% for Gore and 40% for Bush, with 11% uncertain or not wishing to respond.[86]. As a result of the state's contract with Database Technologies, "173,000 registered voters in Florida were permanently wiped off the voter rolls. . According to their results, Bush won under stricter standards and Gore won under looser standards. It was the closest presidential election in American history, with only several hundred votes in Florida determining the winner out of more than 100 million ballots cast nationwide. Rove was political even as a young child. The outcome of the election was ultimately decided by the US Supreme Court in, The 2000 presidential election pitted Republican George W. Bush, governor of Texas and son of former US president George H.W. Bush won 12 of 23 congressional districts. [4] According to The Palm Beach Post, "State lawmakers decided to weed out felons and other ineligible voters in 1998 after a Miami mayoral election was overturned because votes had been cast by the convicted and the dead. The Gore campaign requested that disputed ballots in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Volusia Counties be counted by hand. According to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, "the vast majority of issues in Florida during the 2000 election were caused by an overall lack of leadership in preserving voting rights.". Posted 7 years ago. United States presidential election of 2000, American presidential election held on Nov. 7, 2000, in which Republican George W. Bush narrowly lost the popular vote to Democrat Al Gore but defeated Gore in the electoral college. Fewer than 600 votes separated the candidates, and that margin appeared to be narrowing. What good and Ideas came from china ? The campaign Between May 1999 and Election Day 2000, two Florida secretaries of state, While the Bush campaign opposed the Gore campaign's requests for manual recounts in four heavily Democratic counties, they quietly accepted manual recounts from four Republican-leaning counties. What can the events of 20 years ago teach us about the 2020 election? Immediately following the presidential election in 2000, a. votes were recounted in the state of Florida. The longstanding case law in Florida [ ] has held that the intent of the voters as shown by their ballots should be given effect. By November 10 the machine recount was complete, and Bushs lead stood at 327 votes out of six million cast. Direct link to Edward (Eddie) W.'s post One big question that I h, Posted 2 years ago. [15]. Unlike the much-discussed Palm Beach County butterfly ballot, the Duval County ballot spread choices for president over two non-facing pages. "[6], The 2001 book Stupid White Men and other books described allegations of efforts to deny black citizens in Florida the right to vote. The 2000 presidential election was the closest in the history of the US Electoral College and the first ever to be decided by the US Supreme Court. Omissions? With the election effectively ended, Floridas 25 electoral votes were awarded to George W. Bush, whose lead in the state stood at 327 votes out of six million cast after a machine recount in November. The presidential election of November 7, 2000 was one of the most memorable - and controversial - in the history of the United States. Orange County then performed a hand segregation and determined that these votes numbered 184 for Bush, 249 for Gore and 79 for other candidates. Kohut was among those who saw this flaw even in 2000. [10] The county canvassing board was then to decide whether to do a recount, as well as the method of the recount, in those three precincts. Direct link to shawnfu02's post Would it have been possib, Posted 6 years ago. If Gore had won the recount, then he would have won the election with a total of 292 electoral votes, and Bush would have lost with 246 electoral votes. The uncertain nature of the later studys findings, which could well apply to both, was aptly and poetically expressed by Palm Beach Post columnist Frank Cerabino: Cerabino: Like sorting grains of sand on a windy day, getting a definitive recount of Floridas votes in last years presidential election has turned out to be an exercise in frustration. If they did not send their electoral votes to Congress before the official the deadline to do so, neither Bush nor Gore could have reached 270 electoral votes and a contingent election would have taken place in the House of Representatives for President and in the Senate for Vice President, which would have been super messy and therefore everyone worked hard to avoid that situation. At the time, Republicans expressed dismay at the idea of a recount. A larger consortium of news organizations, including USA Today, The Miami Herald, Knight Ridder, The Tampa Tribune, and five other newspapers next conducted a full recount of all machine-rejected ballots, including both undervotes and overvotes. Jeb Bush really didn'. By winning Florida, Bush narrowly won the electoral vote over Gore by 271 to 266only 1 more than the required 270 (one Gore elector abstained). The US Presidential Election of 2000 featured George W. Bush and Al Gore. It will go down in history as one of the most closest elections in US history. The Democrats share of the Cuban-American vote dropped dramatically after 1996. Why was a re-vote not enacted, that could have been monitored more carefully? However, his presence as governor in Florida did help George W. Bush a lot. Among these was the Palm Beach "butterfly ballot", which resulted in an unusually high number of votes for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan. appealed the florida supreme court's decision to allow a hand recount. Bush ultimately prevailed after a strenuous fight, including an especially brutal effort by the Bush campaign in the South Carolina primary. Bush's win in Florida gave him a majority of votes in the Electoral College and victory in the presidential election. There were also contentions about the card-punch system that some counties used, which required voters to puncture a hole for the ticket they had supported, but that left some cards with hanging chads, or pieces of paper dangling from their ballots. [22] At the same time that the Bush campaign was contesting hand recounts in Democratic counties, it accepted hand recounts in Republican counties that gained them 185 votes, including where Republican Party workers had been permitted to correct errors on thousands of applications for absentee ballots for Republicans. [78][80], Based on the NORC review, the media group concluded that if the disputes over the validity of all the ballots in question had been consistently resolved and any uniform standard applied, the electoral result would have been reversed and Gore would have won by 60 to 171 votes (with, for each punch ballot, at least two of the three ballot reviewers' codes being in agreement). According to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, "the vast majority of issues in Florida during the 2000 election were caused by an overall lack of leadership in preserving voting rights." In Florida in 2000, how many votes did Pat Buchanan receive? The day of inauguration is in January and voting day is held in early November. "[5], This initiative occurred without sufficient protection of voting rights. AP: A vote-by-vote review of untallied ballots in the 2000 Florida presidential election indicates George W. Bush would have narrowly prevailed in the partial recounts sought by Al Gore, but. While the stakes might not be quite as high this time, they are nonetheless substantial: the governorship of Florida, a seat in the U.S. Senate, and the office of state agricultural commission. Please select which sections you would like to print: Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. That first day's results reduced the margin to just over 900 votes. County custom standard: what each individual county canvassing board considered a vote, in regard to both undervotes and overvotes. "[4] A physical mark on a ballot, at or near a designated target, is such an indication. Disputes erupted over the accuracy and reliability of election technology in the state, with confusion over butterfly ballots (ballots that have names on both sides), punch card voting machines, and hanging chads (punch card ballots that were only partially punched). The best answer I can give you is "it's complicated". Cunningham estimated the number of Buchanan supporters in Palm Beach County to be between 400 and 500. Volusia County started its recount on November 12. [16][17], During the recount, controversy ensued with the discovery of various irregularities that had occurred in the voting process in several counties. Kohut thought the first waves of exit polls leaned too much on what appeared to be an over-sampling of demographic groups inclined to vote Democratic. These lawsuits escalated to the U.S. Supreme Court where the final, 5-4 decision was made, ending the recounts and giving the state of Florida's Electoral votes to George W. Bush. More than a few news organizations reached the same conclusion. How does the election of 2000 compare to other presidential elections? It also stayed the state certification to November 26. A: There is currently no strong evidence that acetaminophen use during pregnancy causes autism or ADHD in children. On November 28, Judge N. Sanders Sauls of Leon County Circuit Court rejected Gore's request to include the recount results from Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties. CNN's Gloria Borger explores the 2000 election in a special report Monday at 9 p.m. When the Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide recount of remaining uncounted undervotes, it stipulated that the incomplete results from Palm Beach and Miami-Dade Counties that had been rejected by Katherine Harris be counted. Bush also probably would have won had the state conducted the limited recount of only four heavily Democratic counties that Al Gore asked for, the study found. Although electors are pledged to their candidate and running mate, they are not obligated to vote for them. George W. Bush received fewer popular votes than Albert Gore Jr., but received a majority of electoral votes. Rowman & Littlefield. Former Vice President Al Gore evoked the ghosts of the 2000 election -- when he battled Republican nomineeGeorge W. Bushfor the White House -- as reporters asked him to comment on the state of the 2020 presidential race between Democratic nomineeJoe BidenandPresident Donald Trump. India? What followed was a five-week war over the ballots, the rules, the law and the courts. The 2000 election resulted in numerous court battles over contested ballots and recounts. Where a ballot is so marked as to plainly indicate the voter's choice and intent, it should be counted as marked unless some positive provision of law would be violated. The court ruled 54 on the remedy of the matter, with the majority holding that the Florida Supreme Courts decision had created new election lawa right reserved for the state legislatureand that no recount could be held in time to satisfy a federal deadline for the selection of state electors. For all the furor over Palm Beach, it was black precincts where voters had been turned away, denied a ballot because some had been mislabeled as felons, blocked from voting because of bureaucratic bungles, or because the huge increase in black turnout had overwhelmed local officials. Possible reasons include, but are not limited to, ambient humidity, feeder misalignment and scanner light sensitivity. In effect, the latter ruling made Bush president. A full, official recount of all votes statewide could have gone either way, but one was never conducted. Florida, a swing state, had a major recount dispute that took center stage in the election. Sauls also rejected Gore's contest of the election result on December 4, and Gore appealed that decision too. Bush led the election-night vote count in Florida by 1,784 votes. But in 2000, the prize was the presidency of the United States. Some questioned Buchanan's 3,407 votes in Palm Beach County, Florida, given the liberal leanings of the county, the sizeable Jewish population, and his performance in the remainder of the state. Another point of controversy in the 2000 election was the fact that George W. Bush's brother, Jeb Bush, was the governor of Florida at the time of the recount, although no evidence of wrongdoing surfaced. The 2000 election between George W. Bush, the Republican candidate, and Democratic candidate Al Gore remains controversial because the vote between the two candidates was so close . [37] Because there was no clear indication of what the voters intended, those numbers were not included in the consortium's final tabulations. The Bush campaign immediately petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay of the recount order, which was granted on December 9. The court ordered counties to submit returns by November 26, until which time the stay of certification would stand.[59]. Direct link to SoccerboyH2's post IF the results were "scat, Posted 2 years ago. They argue that American democracy is a far stricter, Lockean, Anglo-American system based on the letter of the law and a successful vote cast by a rational, responsible voter. The Bush campaign subsequently appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, which took up the case Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board on December 1. "In a per curiam decision, the Court first ruled 72 (Justices Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissenting), strictly on equal protection grounds, that the recount be stopped. I don't understand why the Supreme Court couldn't have just let it proceed? She was also an ally of Republican Gov. They celebrated on Tuesday night in the belief that their candidates had prevailed. Bush's chief strategist, Karl Rove, phoned Fox News to insist that Florida was still in play. The recounts had gone up until December 9 (although they had been stopped and restarted and stopped and restarted several times before then) when the Supreme Court stopped the recount with a 7 to 2 decision, on the basis that it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. An elector who votes for someone other than his or her candidate is known as a faithless elector. At the nations highest court, Floridas election system wason pins and needlesas officials scanned election machines, voter lists, vote counting guidelines and partisan officials. Numerous local court rulings went both ways, some ordering recounts because the vote was so close and others declaring that a selective manual recount in a few heavily Democratic counties would be unfair. You can specify conditions of storing and accessing cookies in your browser. The 2000 presidential election between George W Bush and Al Gore was the closest election in modern history with the results hinging on voters in South Florida. The Gore campaign then requested that the disputed ballots in four counties be recounted by hand. The margin in the Sunshine State was so close that it took one's breath away. SC00-2431, Albert Gore, Jr., and Joseph I. Lieberman, Appellants, vs. Katherine Harris, as Secretary, etc., et al., Appellees", "2000 Presidential Election - Handcount (00genhc.xls)", "Counting the vote: the overview; Bush is declared winner in Florida, but Gore vows to contest results", "Disputed Palm Beach ballots held potential gains for Gore", "General, Nonpartisan and Special Elections Recount; Miami-Dade County, Florida", "So, who really won? Networks initially projected Gore the winner in that state but later declared that Bush had opened an insurmountable lead. Corrections? (The case had also been argued on the basis of Article II jurisdictional grounds, which found favor with only Justices Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and William Rehnquist.) The Republicans appealed that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which voted 7-2 to end the Florida court's ordered recount. The vote had been announced by Florida's secretary of state. a) helping the poor b) writing about slavery c) her Abolitionist newspaper d) running the underground railroad, what was fredrick dounglass best known for? To log in and use all the features of Khan Academy, please enable JavaScript in your browser. [84] A Gore win was impossible without a recount of overvotes, which he did not request; however, faxes between Judge Terry Lewis and the canvassing boards throughout the state indicated that Lewis, who oversaw the recount effort, intended to have overvotes counted.[81]. There were punch-card ballots where the voters' attempt to make their choice had only succeeded in detaching a portion of the perforated paper ("hanging chads" ) or merely denting rather than removing the punch-out ("dimpled chads"). He is also alleging thatthere have been widespread accounts of voter fraud in these uncalled states. The Bush campaign quickly filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to delay the recounts until it could hear the case; a stay was issued by the court on December 9. Due to the narrow margin of the original vote count, Florida Election Code 102.141 mandated a statewide machine recount,[5] which began the day after the election. In 2000, Florida was allocated 25 electors because it had 23 congressional districts and 2 senators. Why or why not? Because Clinton had been such a popular president, Gore had no difficulty securing the Democratic nomination, though he sought to distance himself from the Monica Lewinsky scandal and Clintons impeachment trial. Cox News Service, 11 Nov. 2001. "Florida recount study: Bush still wins: Study reveals flaws in ballots, voter errors may have cost Gore victory." When Palm Beach County completed its recount two hours after the certification deadline, its final count was Gore 501 votes, Bush 327 votes excluded from the state certified total. As more votes were tallied, Gore narrowed Bushs lead to less than 2,000 votes, which pushed for an automatic recount in the state as the margin was so tight. George W. Bush 's two presidential election campaigns (2000, 2004). The Florida recount was the subject of the 2008 television film Recount, which aired on HBO. What the Bush v. Gore studies showed", "Media Recount: Bush Won the 2000 Election", "Statistical Practice: Reliability of the Uncertified Ballots in the 2000 Presidential Election in Florida", "Newspapers' recount shows Bush prevailed", "Florida voter errors cost Gore the election", "Battlefield Florida: A Chat with Lance deHaven-Smith", How we got here: A timeline of the Florida recount, Video highlight of Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Wells opening, Video highlights of November 20, 2000 and December 7, 2000 oral arguments in. In late October, however, the gap in the polls between Bush and Gore narrowed dramatically. Gore garnered 255 electoral votes to Bushs 246, but neither candidate won the 270 electoral votes necessary for victory. Judge Robert Rosenberg of the Broward County Canvassing Board uses a magnifying glass to examine a dimpled chad on a punch card ballot on November 24, 2000 during a vote recount in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. ^2 2 2000 Electoral College Results. Lawyers for the two sides began arriving in Florida, focusing on the state capital of Tallahassee. None of these findings are certain. What Can This Tell Us About the 2020 Presidential Race? Florida Elections For Governor And U.S. Senate Heading For Recount. Initial election returns showed that Gore had won the popular vote, but neither candidate had garnered the 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency. United States presidential election of 2000, American presidential election held on Nov. 7, 2000, in which Republican George W. Bush narrowly lost the popular vote to Democrat Al Gore but defeated Gore in the electoral college. That 5-4 majority was composed of the nominees of Republican Presidents George H.W. Gore called Bush to concede the election, but in the early hours of the following morning it became apparent that the Florida race was much closer than Gores staff had originally believed. The following were the members of the Electoral College from the state. [4] Once it became clear that Florida would decide the presidential election, the nation's attention focused on the manual recount. This page was last edited on 31 January 2023, at 18:06. Not from where I'm sitting and what I'm looking at." It was ostensibly completed on November 10 in the 66 Florida counties that used vote-counting machines and reduced Bush's lead to 327 votes. Florida had 25 electoral votes and became the focus of a court battle over the outcome of the election. The Palm Beach Post put it more dramatically: He couldnt have caught George W. Bush even if his two best chances for an official recount had played out. Nine counties (Alachua, Columbia, DeSoto, Glades, Lake, Sarasota, Seminole, Sumter and Wakulla) reported that it was their intent to count reclaimable overvotes under the Florida Supreme Court order. Updates? Cauchon, Dennis and Jim Drinkard. Judge Robert Rosenberg of the Broward County Canvassing Board uses a magnifying glass to examine a dimpled chad on a punch card ballot on November 24, 2000 during a vote recount in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Want to feel old? Direct link to ayushkadri's post No. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Five hundred thirty-seven votes. Direct link to Mr. S's post B.K., sounds like you are, Posted 5 years ago. Preventing the canvassing boards from continuing to conduct recounts beyond the seven-day timeframe (specified in the law, but with ambiguity as to how firm it was intended to be), would "summarily disenfranchise innocent electors [voters]" and could not be allowed unless the recounts continued for so long as to "compromise the integrity of the electoral process." These convoluted ballot designs led to calls for election and voting reform, and some states installed electronic voting machines to ensure greater accuracy in future elections. a. a global recession. The process was extremely divisive and led to calls for electoral reform in Florida. [83] Under the other standards used in the study, Bush's margin of victory increased as looser standards were used. Fast forward three weeks later on Nov. 26, 2000, the state of Florida declared Bush the winner by just 537 votes. Bush v. Gore was a case heard before the U.S. Supreme Court in which that court reversed a Florida Supreme Court request for a selective manual recount of ballots cast in the U.S. presidential election of 2000. While Democrats did make their way down to Florida, there was nothing like the certainty or the passion that ignited Republicans.