Disputed Presidential Election of 2000

V

The Supreme Court of the United States

With certification, Bush had taken a big step toward securing a presidential victory. But now he faced a huge decision: whether to continue his U.S. Supreme Court case challenging the Florida high court’s decision to extend the original certification deadline and allow manual re-counts. If the Supreme Court upheld the deadline extension, Bush would likely be at the mercy of any new decisions from the Florida court resulting from Gore’s contest of the certified tally. But Bush, believing that the Florida Supreme Court should not have extended the certification deadline, decided to continue to the U.S. Supreme Court.

On December 1, the Supreme Court heard 90 minutes of oral argument from both sides. Bush attorneys, led by Theodore Olson, contended that the Florida court effectively rewrote the state’s election laws by extending the certification deadline—something that only the state legislature could do. Gore lawyers argued that in such an extraordinarily close race, a re-count was the only way to ensure that the will of the people was represented. The justices asked many questions and left legal experts with the strong impression that they remained as divided over the matter as the rest of the country.

Meanwhile in Florida’s capital of Tallahassee, the Gore team was contesting the election results before Leon County Circuit Judge Sanders Sauls. Its main goal was to secure the re-count of about 14,000 disputed ballots from Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties that they said could change the outcome of the election. Gore attorneys had little confidence that they could win their fight in front of Sauls, a Republican appointee. They decided to move through the trial as quickly as they could so they could file their appeal with the Florida Supreme Court, which had proven itself more sympathetic. Bush lawyers wanted to slow down the proceedings. They wanted to move the calendar as close as they could to December 12, the deadline for the state to choose its electors. Sauls impounded the ballots in question and had them shipped to Tallahassee in a Ryder truck, an odyssey covered live by television cameras traveling overhead in helicopters.

On Monday, December 4, the U.S. Supreme Court set aside the Florida Supreme Court’s decision extending the certification deadline. In essence, the justices asked the Florida court to explain its ruling. That same day, Judge Sauls ruled against Gore’s bid for further hand re-counts, asserting that Gore failed to show any “reasonable probability” that additional counting would change the outcome of the election.

---

---

Gore’s situation was looking bleak, although another pair of critical court cases seemed to offer real, if slender, hope. These cases were lawsuits in Martin and Seminole counties, which charged that county election supervisors had allowed local Republican officials to illegally complete unfinished absentee ballot applications.

VI

The Dispute Ends

The Florida Supreme Court agreed to hear Gore’s appeal of Sauls’s ruling. But with the December 12 deadline looming larger, the court allowed just a day for filing briefs and one hour of oral arguments on December 7. Facing the Florida high court for a second time, Boies argued that under state law the intent of the voter is all-important. The only way to determine intent was to do a manual re-count of the disputed ballots. Bush’s lawyer, Barry Richard, argued that the manual re-count was unjustified because no machine errors had been reported.

On Friday, December 8, judges in the Martin and Seminole county cases ruled that although irregularities existed in local election procedures, the ballots cast still accurately reflected the will of the voters. But the same day, the Florida Supreme Court, by a 4 to 3 vote, ordered a statewide manual re-count of about 42,000 undervote ballots. The court also awarded Gore 383 votes from the previous re-counts in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties that Secretary of State Harris had refused to include in her certification, cutting Bush’s lead from 537 to 154.

Bush’s legal team immediately asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the re-count until it could file an appeal. The next day the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay stopping the re-count until it could hear the case. In deciding to hear the appeal, the conservative wing of the court, led by Justice Antonin Scalia, signaled strongly that Bush was likely to prevail. Scalia wrote that “a majority of the Court, while not deciding the issues presented, believe that the petitioner [Bush] has a substantial probability of success.”

The long months of campaigning and the extraordinary five-week fight for Florida all came down to 90 minutes of oral argument in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on December 11 in George W. Bush and Richard Cheney v. Albert Gore, Jr., et al. Bush’s lawyer, Theodore Olson, argued that time was running out for the state to choose its electors by December 12. He also said that the manual re-counts authorized by the Florida Supreme Court violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution. Specifically, when counties used different standards to evaluate disputed ballots, they were treating voters differently. Boies, Gore’s lawyer, again argued that intent of the voter is paramount in Florida law and the only way to determine that intent was to manually re-count the disputed ballots.

The next evening, the court effectively ended the 2000 presidential election. In a 5 to 4 vote, it ruled that there would be no further re-counting of the disputed Florida ballots. The majority opinion stated that using multiple methods to re-count votes in various counties was unconstitutional because it violated the equal protection clause. In addition, the opinion stated that it was impossible to come up with a legally acceptable standard of how to manually re-count the ballots by the December 12 deadline. In issuing its decision, the Court split along partisan lines. The five justices who found in favor of Bush were Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Scalia. They were all nominated by Republican presidents and were generally considered the more conservative members of the Court.

The four dissenters were Stephen Breyer, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and John Paul Stevens. Some of the minority opinions were bitter in their opposition. Stevens wrote that the Court’s decision “can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land.” He also noted that “the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”

The next morning, Gore’s campaign chairman, Bill Daley, called his Republican counterpart, Don Evans, to say that Gore would concede in a televised message that evening. The election was over. Bush had won the election to become the 43rd president of the United States, receiving 271 electoral votes to Gore’s 266. However, Gore won the national popular vote by more than 500,000 votes out of 105 million cast.

VII

Reaction and Effects

The country was deeply divided on the outcome of the Florida election dispute. Many Americans felt that Gore should have conceded much earlier instead of pursuing legal action. They argued that Bush was the rightful winner each time the votes were counted. Other Americans felt that the U.S. Supreme Court never allowed all the votes to be counted. Many were simply relieved that the whole spectacle was over. Many others were disappointed in the U.S. Supreme Court because they thought the court was supposed to be above political battles. In a poll taken by the Wall Street Journal right after the Supreme Court decision, 53 percent of those surveyed saw the ruling as politically motivated.

During and after the election dispute, some Americans argued that the electoral college system should be abolished. They did not feel that it was fair that a presidential candidate could win the national popular vote and still lose the election. However, others noted that the system gave a voice to smaller states by providing a minimum of three electoral votes for each state regardless of its population.

The ripple effect from the Florida election dispute will likely be felt in American politics for years to come. A panel was convened in Florida to investigate ways to improve the state’s election process. In addition, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other civil rights organizations filed lawsuits against the state of Florida and seven counties. The lawsuits alleged that some African American voters were discouraged from voting, either by poor machinery or bureaucratic barriers, or even denied the right to vote because their names were missing from the official lists. In 2001 the Florida legislature passed the Florida Election Reform Act, which prohibited punch card ballot machines, provided for a uniform statewide ballot design, and set standards for reviewing ballots during a manual re-count. In addition, some of the Florida counties settled the lawsuits against them.

The U.S. Congress has pledged to consider various voting reforms. It has also promised to scrutinize the role of television network coverage on election night—their botched projections of the Florida vote and the whole practice of calling election results state by state. Some people argued that when the news organizations incorrectly called Gore the winner in Florida, they might have influenced voters who had not voted yet.

Some news organizations, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, set out to conduct their own re-count of the Florida votes for historical interest. Their review produced mixed findings: If Gore’s request for a re-count in Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Volusia counties had been successful, Bush still would have won the majority of the votes. If a full statewide re-count of the undervotes had been done, as ordered by the Florida Supreme Court but halted by the U.S. Supreme Court, Bush would also have received the most votes. If Gore had requested a full re-count of all the disputed votes statewide, both undervotes and overvotes (where a voter selected more than one candidate), he would have received the majority of the votes. But Gore never requested a full statewide re-count.

Some people speculated that the disputed election would affect Bush’s presidency and the public perception of his legitimacy. However, after the terrorist attack against the United States on September 11, 2001, much of that speculation ended as support for the president increased (see September 11 Attacks).

	More from Encarta
	•  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain