Christmas Every Day

2000 Bush v. Gore is settled

What appears to outsiders to be a single election for the presidency of the United States is in a fact of a collection of over 50 state and district votes, each conducted with different rules and different forms of balloting. Nowhere was this more evident, or more controversial, than in the state of Florida during the 2000 election that pitted Republican George W. Bush against Democratic Albert Gore.

On election night, November 8, it appeared that Bush had prevailed and Gore made the customary telephone call of concession. Furious discussions among Democratic partisans reversed directions and Gore phoned a befuddled Bush to withdraw his concession. Gore had appeared to win the popular vote and some states, particularly Florida, might produce recounts in the balloting. A mandatory recount in that state confirmed a Bush victory but Gore’s people appealed in court.

The recount in Florida would be the subject of intense litigation with much of the uncertainty due to the nature of the voting machines Florida used, devices in which voters were to punch holes beside the candidates of their choice. But such machines often produced debatable results with the ‘chads’ often hanging from the holes. Scrutineers had to somehow divine the intention of the voter in such cases as

• Hanging chads — attached to the ballot at only one corner.
• Swinging chads — attached to the ballot at two corners.
• Tri-chads — attached to the ballot at three corners.
• Pregnant or dimpled chads — attached to the ballot at all four corners, but bearing an indentation indicating the voter may have intended to mark the ballot. (Sometimes “pregnant” is used to indicate a greater mark than “dimpled”.)

On this date in 2000 the Supreme Court 5-4 (the usual suspects in their respective places) ruled that no recount was necessary and that Bush had won Florida’s electoral votes, making him the President.