U.S. presidential election, 2000

The 2000 U.S Presidential election was one of the closest elections in the history of the United States, contested primarily by then Texas Governor George W. Bush (Republican), and then Vice President Al Gore (Democrat). The election took over a month to resolve, highlighted by premature declaration of a winner on election night, and an extremely close result in the state of Florida. Florida's 25 electoral votes ultimately decided the election by a razor thin margin of actual votes, and was certified only after numerous court challenges and recounts. Despite Florida's vote certification, some still disputed the final result (or even do to this day). Nonetheless, with Florida's vote certification and the subsequent electoral college, the presidency was won by George W. Bush.

Presidential Candidate Electoral Vote Popular Vote Pct Party Running Mate
(Electoral Votes)

George W. Bush (W) 271 50,456,002 47.87 Republican Richard Cheney (271)

Al Gore 266 50,999,897 48.38 Democrat Joseph Lieberman (266)

Ralph Nader 0 2,882,955 2.74 Green Winona LaDuke (0)

Patrick J. Buchanan 0 448,895 0.42 Reform Ezola Foster (0)

Harry Browne 0 384,431 0.36 Libertarian Art Olivier (0)

Howard Phillips 0 98,020 0.09 Constitution J. Curtis Frazier (0)

John Hagelin 0 83,714 0.08 Natural La/Reform Nat Goldhaber (0)

Other 0 51,186 0.05
''No electoral vote cast (DC) 1
Total 538 105,405,100 100.00

Detailed results by state: see U.S. presidential election, 2000 (detail)

Other elections: 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012

Sources: U.S. Office of the Federal Register (electoral vote), Federal Election Commission (popular vote)

Table of contents

1 Primaries
2 Campaigns
3 Overview, and timeline (election day and beyond)
4 Florida election results

4.1 Controversy in Florida

5 Minor Party Candidates
6 Major Campaign Sponsors

6.2 Republican Party
6.3 Democratic Party

7 Media post-electoral studies/recounts
8 See also:
9 References/external links

Primaries

See: US presidential primaries of 2000

Overview, and timeline (election day and beyond)

The 2000 Presidential election was one of the closest elections in the history of the United States. Other close elections include the elections of 1800, 1876, 1916, 1960, 1968, and 1976.

The results of the November 7 election were not known for more than a month after the election, because the counting and recounting of Florida presidential ballots, which swung the election, extended for more than a month. The final (and disputed) official Florida count gave the victory to Bush by 537 votes.

During the recounting process, the Bush campaign hired George H. W. Bush's former Secretary of State James Baker to oversee the legal process, and the Gore campaign hired Bill Clinton's former Secretary of State Warren Christopher. 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. Eventually, the Gore campaign appealed to the Florida Supreme Court whose liberal judges ordered that the recounting process proceed. The Bush campaign subsequently appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States which took up the case Bush v. Gore on December 1. On December 4, the court nullified the decision of the Florida Supreme Court saying that the court's decision to bypass state election laws, which stated that results had to be certified by a certain date, was dubious at best saying that there was "considerable uncertainty" as to the precise grounds for their ruling.

Early in the afternoon of December 12, the Republican-dominated Florida House of Representatives voted nearly on party lines to certify the state's electors for Bush. Later that afternoon, the Florida Supreme Court upheld lower court rulings authorizing recounts in several south Florida counties.

All the lower court rulings became moot when around 10pm on December 12, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 ideologically-split decision in favor of Bush, effectively ending the election. The court's majority cited differing vote-counting standards from county to county and the lack of a single judicial officer to oversee the recount, both of which, it ruled, violated the equal-protection clause of the United States Constitution.

At 9pm on December 13, in a nationally televised address, Gore conceded that he lost his bid for the presidency. He asks his supporters to support Bush, saying, "This is America, and we put country before party." During his speech, Gore's family and Joe and Hadassah Lieberman stood quietly nearby.

Texas Governor George W. Bush became President-elect and began forming his transition committee. Bush tried to reach across party lines and bridge a divided America, stating that "the president of the United States is the president of every single American, of every race and every background." Bush took the oath of office on January 20, 2001.

Vice President Al Gore came in second even though he received a larger number of popular votes. This was at least the fourth time that a candidate who did not receive a plurality of the popular vote received a majority of the electoral committee vote, the first time probably being in the 1824 elections although popular vote records do not exist for earlier elections. Until this election, the 1876 elections had been the most contentious in U.S. history.

The Electoral College vote was so close that a shift from Bush to Gore in almost any state won by Bush would have swung the election to Gore (271 Electoral College votes for Bush and 266 for Gore). The national popular vote count, which does not affect the outcome, was also very close (Gore got 500,000 more popular votes than Bush) and this contributed to the controversy of the election.

Some have pointed out that if our system were based on the popular vote, rather than the electoral college, then the turnout of voters would have been different. Voter turnout in states that favor one party heavily tends to be lower. Because of this, the popular vote cannot be used to predict who would have won an actual popular vote election.

The Florida vote was the closest of all of the states and state law provided for an automatic recount due to the small difference, and there were general concerns about the fairness and accuracy of the voting process, especially since a small change in the vote count could change the result. The Democratic Party lodged a dispute over the state's election results requesting that disputed ballots in three heavily-Democratic counties be counted by hand. However, in a 5-to-4 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States ultimately decided to halt recounting efforts in those counties because any recount could not be completed in a constitutional manner.

Florida election results

On election night, it quickly became clear that Florida would be a contentious state. The national television networks, through information provided them by the Voter News Service first called Florida for Gore, then Bush, then as 'too close to call'. The Voter News Service was an organization backed and supported by television networks and the Associated Press to help determine the results of presidential elections as early as possible, through early result tallies and exit polling.

Controversy in Florida

There were a number of overseas ballots missing postmarks or filled out in such a way that they were invalid under Florida law. A poll worker filled out the missing information on some hundred of these ballots. The Democrats moved to have all overseas ballots thrown out because of this. These disputes added to the mass of litigation between parties to influence the counting of ballots. The largest group of disputed overseas ballots were military ballots, which the Republicans argued to have accepted.
Some 179,855 ballots were not counted in the official tally. These were ballots which were mistakenly filled out, however, in some counties the voting machines (Accuvotes) would return the ballot and allow voters to try again, whilst in other counties the reject mechanisms were not enabled, thus giving voters only one chance to correctly mark the ballot. As a general trend, reject mechanisms were disabled in disproportionately African-American and Hispanic counties.
57,700 voters were incorrectly listed as felons on a "scrub list" and thus their votes were not counted. (In some cases, the alleged felonies were dated several years after the election and the vast majority of the listed were not felons.) These persons were disproportionately Democrats of African-American and Hispanic descent. Furthermore, an additional 8,000 non-felons had been supplied by the state of Texas, via Database Technologies, and these people were added to the list in May 2000; these 8,000 were later removed from the list following a story by the Palm Beach Post. 714 Illinoians and 990 Ohians were added in the same fashion and not removed.
Jeb Bush, the brother of George W. Bush, was governor of Florida, leading some Gore advocates to make various allegations of impropriety, especially due to their joint campaigning for the Republican vote in Florida and Jeb Bush's assurances to George W. Bush that the Republicans could win Florida. It is typical for sitting governors to strongly campaign on behalf of the candidate with the same party affiliation.
A suit by NAACP (NAACP v. Harris) argued that Florida was in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the US Constitution's Equal Protection Amendment. Settlement agreements were reached in this suit. On a related note, Greg Palast provides the following statistics in his book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, implying a gap in uncounted vote percentages between primarily African American and Caucasian counties. It should be noted, however, that these statistics do not specify that the counties sampled are both listing the highest uncounted vote totals.
- Uncounted votes in counties with 25%+ African-American Residents: Gadsden (12%); Hamilton (9%); Jackson (7%); Madison (7%)
- Uncounted votes in counties with 95%+ Caucasian Residents: Citrus (0.5%); Pasco (3%); Santa Rosa (1%); Sarasota (2%)
Others, such as Washington County Elections Chief Carol Griffen (1 p.25), have argued that Florida was in violation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 by requiring those convicted of felonies in other states (and subsequently restored their rights by said states), to request clemency and a restoration of their rights, from Governor Bush, in a process which might take 2 years and ultimately was left to Bush's discretion. One should note Schlenther v. Florida Department of State (June 1998) which ruled that Florida could not prevent a man convicted of a felony in Connecticut, where his civil rights had not been lost, from exercising his civil rights.
Several months after the election, the Palm Beach Post announced that thousands of felons had voted in favour of Gore. Those who disagree with the newspaper, argue that the Post used an invalid list provided by the ChoicePoint corporation and that nobody has been arrested for illegally voting.
The television news media called the state for Al Gore around 9:00pm EST, while voters in the western panhandle (which is in the Central Time Zone) of the state were still voting, potentially depressing the voter turnout. This region of the state is mostly Republican.
The result of the Florida U.S. Presidential race was so close that some Democratic Party officials argue that one Florida county's hard-to-use ballot may have unfairly decided the presidency. Critics argue that some voters in Palm Beach County, Fla. might have accidentally voted for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan, when they thought they were voting for Al Gore, on a so-called "butterfly ballot". The Democrats are listed second in the left column; but punching a hole in the second circle actually cast a vote for Buchanan.[1]. But this study proves very little as the ballots used by the children were far simpler than those in the election as they were made of only one page and did not list anything comparable to Vice Presidential candidates.
Due to the narrow margin of the original vote count, Florida law mandated a statewide recount. In addition, the Gore campaign requested that the votes in 3 counties be recounted by hand, which is within their rights under Florida election law. The Bush campaign then sued in federal court to stop the hand recounts. This case eventually reached the United States Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 to stop the vote count, effectively declaring Bush the winner. The US supreme court also found that the additional recounts requested by Gore to be unconstitutional, in a 7-2 vote. Ultimately, Gore conceded the election and asked that his supporters also acknowledge Bush as the new president.

Final certified vote for the state of Florida (25 electoral votes)

Presidential Candidate	Vote Total	Pct	Party
George W. Bush (W)	2,912,790	48.850	Republican
Al Gore	2,912,253	48.841	Democrat
Ralph Nader	97,421	1.633	Green
Patrick J. Buchanan	17,412	0.292	Reform
Harry Browne	16,102	0.270	Libertarian
John Hagelin	2,274	0.038	Natural La/Reform
Howard Phillips	1,378	0.023	Constitution
Other	3,027	0.051	-
Total	5,962,657	100.00
Source: CBS News State Results for Election 2000

Minor Party Candidates

There were five other candidates on the majority of the 51 ballots (50 states plus the District of Columbia): Harry Browne (Libertarian, 50), Pat Buchanan (Reform, 49), Ralph Nader (Green, 44), Howard Phillips (Constitution, 41), and John Hagelin (Natural Law, 38).

Nader was the most successful of third party candidates, drawing 2.74% of the popular vote. His campaign was marked by a traveling tour of "super-rallies"; large rallies held in sports arenas like Madison Square Garden, with filmmaker Michael Moore as master of ceremonies. After initially ignoring Nader, the Gore campaign made a big publicity pitch to (potential) Nader supporters in the final weeks of the campaign, downplaying Gore's differences with Nader on the issues and claiming that Gore's ideas were more similar to Nader's than Bush's were, noting that Gore had a better chance of winning than Nader. In the aftermath of the campaign, many Gore supporters blamed Nader for drawing enough would-be Gore votes to push Bush over Gore, labeling Nader a "spoiler" candidate.

Major Campaign Sponsors

Republican Party

AT&T -- $2,702,871
Global Crossing -- $967,293
Microsoft -- $1,586,635
Philip Morris -- $2,124,562

Democratic Party

AT&T -- $1,924,545
Global Crossing -- $1,261,152
Microsoft -- $1,276,413
Goldman Sachs -- $1,291,975

Media post-electoral studies/recounts

In 2003, US citizens living in the state of Florida were asked who they voted for in the 2000 Election as part of the Statistical Abstract Census. The results showed President Bush receiving more than 1000 votes more than former Vice President Gore.