This page was last edited on 31 January 2023, at 18:06. [20] It was expected that had they been able to vote, most would have chosen the Democratic candidate. CNN.com, 2001. ", "THE 2000 CAMPAIGN: THE VOTERS; Independents and the Elderly Lift Gore in Florida, Poll Says", "2000 Presidential General Election Results", "Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections County Data", Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush But Study Finds Gore Might Have Won Statewide Tally of All Uncounted Ballots., Category: Books about the 2000 United States presidential election, Florida election recount and legal proceedings, Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2000_United_States_presidential_election_in_Florida&oldid=1138104961, 2000 United States presidential election by state, United States presidential elections in Florida, Articles containing potentially dated statements from November 2020, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Articles to be expanded from November 2021, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 8 February 2023, at 01:40. On December 4, the Court ordered the Florida Supreme Court to clarify its ruling that had extended the certification date. [14]:89 On November 13, the federal court ruled against an injunction. Could Florida have decided not to send its electors to the Electoral College if it did not have time to ensure the election was properly counted? [81] Florida State University professor of public policy Lance deHaven-Smith observed that, even considering only undervotes, "under any of the five most reasonable interpretations of the Florida Supreme Court ruling, Gore does, in fact, more than make up the deficit". Possible reasons include, but are not limited to, ambient humidity, feeder misalignment and scanner light sensitivity. Please select which sections you would like to print: Michael Levy was political science editor (2000-06), executive editor (2006-11), editor of Britannica Blog (2010-11), and director of product content & curriculum (2011-12) at Encyclopaedia Britannica. 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. A problem that occurred in Florida during the 2000 election was very minute difference in votes that state statute necessitated a repeat. An elector from the District of Columbia "cast a blank ballot", effectively abstaining, so DC cast only 2 of its 3 electoral votes for a candidate for both President and Vice President. Also uncounted were many absentee, military and provisional ballots. As USA Today said of the findings on May 11, 2001: USA Today: George W. Bush would have won a hand recount of all disputed ballots in Floridas presidential election if the most widely accepted standard for judging votes had been applied. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. rythionic. Their chosen electors then vote for president and vice president. According to the study, 3146 (3%) of the 111,261 examined overvotes "contained clear and therefore legally valid votes not counted in any of the manual recounts during the dispute. Yes, I do. Gore, as Bill Clintons vice president for eight years, was the clear favourite in the primary to win the Democratic nomination. On December 12, 2000, in a 72 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Florida Supreme Courts decision that manual recounts of ballots should continue in some counties, holding that the various methods and standards of the recount process violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. In a statewide election decided by hundreds, maybe only dozens, of votes, the limitations of the voting machinery compounded with sometimes sloppy custody of the ballots and the slight but measurable biases of allegedly neutral human tabulators make getting precise vote totals virtually impossible. George W. Bush received fewer popular votes than Albert Gore Jr., but received a majority of electoral votes. Meanwhile, the Bush campaign worked to stop the recount. [37] Such a statewide review including all uncounted votes was a tangible possibility, as Leon County Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis, whom the Florida Supreme Court had assigned to oversee the statewide recount, had scheduled a hearing for December 13 (mooted by the U.S. Supreme Court's final ruling on December 12) to consider including overvotes. Bush, and Democrat Bill Clinton. "[6], The 2001 book Stupid White Men and other books described allegations of efforts to deny black citizens in Florida the right to vote. What was the primary election-year problem in Florida? Consider the fact that babies who were crying in cribs while their parents agonized over Florida's protracted presidential recount in 2000 are now of voting age. A January 2001 review by the Palm Beach Post of those "set-aside" ballots determined that 4318 were "unambiguous" valid votes. The Florida election was closely scrutinized after Election Day. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. The only thing that could be done was to recount the votes but that was stopped. A full, official recount of all votes statewide could have gone either way, but one was never conducted. our elections: badly kept lists, shoddy ballots during the 2000 Presidential Election. Conservatives claimed that the same ballot had been successfully used in the 1996 election;[18] in fact, it had never been used in a Palm Beach County election among rival candidates for office. USA Today, The Miami Herald, and Knight Ridder commissioned accounting firm BDO Seidman to count undervotes. florida expired registration fee; bahama breeze yellow rice recipe. Palm Beach Post, 11 Nov. 2001. That first day's results reduced the margin to just over 900 votes. CNN's Gloria Borger explores the 2000 election in a special report Monday at 9 p.m. As the manual recounts progressed, most of Florida's counties were considering overseas absentee ballots. Treating the petition as a writ of certiorari (a formal request for review), the Court agreed to take up the case, Bush v. Gore. Polk, Hamilton, Seminole, and Taylor Counties, which used the more reliable optical scanners, decided to manually examine unreadable ballots (both undervotes and overvotes) during the counties' electronic recounts, in accordance with those counties' existing policies (see. Gore request for recounts in four counties: Florida Supreme Court order: accepts completed recounts for Broward, Palm Beach, Volusia and Miami-Dade (139 precincts); applies the above "prevailing standard" (but with no overvotes) to remaining Miami-Dade and other 63 counties. Finally, we hit the seventh page.. All were among 10,310 undervotes in the county. "[51], Although Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said on November 9 that "Palm Beach County is a Pat Buchanan stronghold and that's why Pat Buchanan received 3,407 votes there",[52] Buchanan's Florida coordinator, Jim McConnell, responded by calling that "nonsense", and Jim Cunningham, chairman of the executive committee of Palm Beach County's Reform Party, responded, "I don't think so. Gore had first called Bush to congratulate him on his victory, called again to rescind the concession. Fast forward three weeks later on Nov. 26, 2000, the state of Florida declared Bush the winner by just 537 votes. Why was a re-vote not enacted, that could have been monitored more carefully? It would have made the election longer, yes, but was it REALLY unconstitutional? The standards that were chosen for the NORC study ranged from a "most restrictive" standard (accepts only so-called perfect ballots that machines somehow missed and did not count, or ballots with unambiguous expressions of voter intent) to a "most inclusive" standard (applies a uniform standard of "dimple or better" on punch marks and "all affirmative marks" on optical scan ballots). 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 official result was finally decided by Katherine Harris, Florida's Secretary of State, when she was forced to certified the . 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. [78] The 175,010 ballots examined contained undervotes (votes with no choice made for president) and overvotes (votes made with more than one choice marked). Orange County presented fewer rejected ballots to the NORC than expected. Rick Scott did the same for the Senate seat. The same day, a state judge upheld that deadline but ruled that further recounts could be considered later. 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. The Florida Supreme Court ordered only a recount of so-called "undervotes," about 62,000 ballots where voting machines didnt detect any vote for a presidential candidate. In a chorus that echoes those voices of 2000, Florida Republicans (and indeed the GOP generally) are expressing dismay at the recount of 2018. However, Kohut noted it might also mean that a disproportionate number of these Democratic-leaning groups were voting early, or that a disproportionate number were being represented in the exit polls. "But," it said, "Gore could not have won without a hand count of overvote ballots, something that he did not request.". c. 271. [78] Among the nearly 85,000 Votomatic overvotes in the sample, only 721 reclaimable votes were confirmed in the NORC study. Q: When the votes were recounted in Florida, who won the 2000 presidential election? In this constitutional system, the "will of the people" is an irrelevant abstraction. Four counties distributed sample ballots to voters that differed from the actual ballot used on election day, including Duval County, which used a caterpillar ballot, so called because the list of presidential candidates stretched over two pages. The organization analyzed 61,190 undervotes and 113,820 overvotes. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). By late November the Florida state canvassing board certified Bush the winner by 537 votes, but the election still was unresolved, as legal battles remained.