Dispute over the butterfly ballot 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. For example, 21,188 of the Florida overvotes, or nearly one-fifth of the total, originated from Duval County, where the presidential ballot was split across two pages and voters were instructed to "vote every page". Jeb Bush really didn't do anything to rig the vote in Florida. Immediately following the presidential election in 2000, a. votes were recounted in the state of Florida. Direct link to David Alexander's post There are many possible r, Posted 6 years ago. The NORC study (see below) did not address either of the concerns about overseas absentee ballots and Nassau County's certification change, as their effects were already included in the baseline totals. Posted 7 years ago. 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? By the time the networks switched Florida to Bush, the Texan had enough Electoral College support to be the projected winner. 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. 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. She was also an ally of Republican Gov. The state's electorate was becoming more diverse in general, with growing Asian and Hispanic immigrant populations. Bush or Gore? Possible reasons include, but are not limited to, ambient humidity, feeder misalignment and scanner light sensitivity. Undervotes from optical-scan counties, however, correlate with Democratic votes more than Republican votes, and in particular to counties that scanned ballots at a central location rather than at precinct locations. 03.06 Elections and Voting Flashcards - Learning tools & flashcards Bush's margin was so small that all the anomalies and oddities that mar the margins of any major election ballooned into major national controversies. One of them came from the campaign of the Republican nominee, George W. Bush, then governor of Texas. 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. Bush carried most states in the South, the rural Midwest, and the Rocky Mountain region, while Gore won most states in the Northeast, the upper Midwest, and the Pacific Coast. The organization analyzed 61,190 undervotes and 113,820 overvotes. A full, official recount of all votes statewide could have gone either way, but one was never conducted. [10] Voters from reliably Democratic states in the Northeast had also been migrating to Florida since the 1950s. On November 9, the Bush campaign announced they had hired George H. W. Bush's former Secretary of State James Baker and Republican political consultant Roger Stone to oversee their legal team,[8][9] and the Gore campaign hired Bill Clinton's former Secretary of State Warren Christopher. BDO Seidman's results, reported in USA Today, show that under the strictest standard, where only a cleanly punched ballot with a fully removed chad was counted, Gore's margin was three votes. The election of 2000 (article) | Khan Academy In comparison, counties that used paper ballots scanned by computers at voting places (in order to give voters a chance to correct their ballot if it had an error) had just 1 in 200 uncountable ballots. Most inclusive standard: any dimpled chads, any affirmative mark on optical scan ballots; includes optical scan overvotes. "[4] A physical mark on a ballot, at or near a designated target, is such an indication. In the weeks following Election Day in the 2000 U.S. presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, there was a period of vote recounting in Florida. The Florida election was closely scrutinized after Election Day. Five hundred thirty-seven votes. The 2000 Presidential Election - The Florida Recount The undervotes and overvotes in Florida amounted to 3% of all votes cast in the state. By November 10 the machine recount was complete, and Bushs lead stood at 327 votes out of six million cast. In its opinion, the Supreme Court cited several areas where the Florida Supreme Court had violated both the federal and Florida constitutions. 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. Advertisement [15]. According to factcheck.org, "Nobody can say for sure who might have won. But it soon became clear the precincts reporting on Tuesday did not include all the voters whose ballots were sent by mail. NBC News' Simone Boyce takes a look back at the 2000 election and explains the. Bush became the first Republican to win the White House without carrying Palm Beach County since the county's founding in 1909. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Ultimately, it came down to just 537 votes out of six million cast. Corrections? The results of this tally were to be added to the November 26 tally. Florida state law at the time allowed a candidate to request a manual recount by protesting the results of at least three precincts. At NPR, the advice from election-night guest Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Research Center, was to hold off on calling Florida. The only thing that could be done was to recount the votes but that was stopped. Most of the variation occurred in Votomatic overvotes, the least likely ballots to yield votes in a recount. The results of the 2000 U.S. presidential election are provided in the table. Subsequent statements by Lewis and internal court documents support the likelihood that overvotes would have been included in the recount. Meanwhile, there was a heavy backlash in the Cuban-American population against Democrats during the Elian Gonzalez dispute, during which Janet Reno, President Bill Clintons Attorney General, ordered the six-year-old Cuban refugee to be returned to Cuba. Upon such an overvote, the entire vote for that office shall be void and shall not be counted. As court challenges were issued over the legality of hand recounts in select counties, news stories were filled with the arcane vocabulary of the election judge. [21] Additionally, this Florida election produced many more "overvotes" than usual, especially in predominantly African-American precincts in Duval County (Jacksonville), where some 21,000 ballots had multiple markings, such as two or more choices for president. Positive sign indicates number of votes that decision caused to be included (or put back) in state certified total. 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. The election hinged on results from the state of Florida, where the vote was so close as to mandate a recount. These standards are applied to both undervotes and overvotes. Taylor County determined voter intent on some overvotes; however, it did not include them in its certified results. Meanwhile, Republicans relied on their own 52-page manual for the same purpose. 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. According to legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, later analysis showed that a total of 18 countiesaccounting for a quarter of all votes cast in Floridadid not carry out the legally mandated machine recount, but "No one from the Gore campaign ever challenged this view" that the machine recount had been completed. At the nations highest court, Floridas election system wason pins and needlesas officials scanned election machines, voter lists, vote counting guidelines and partisan officials. On November 11, it joined a group of Florida voters in suing in federal district court for a preemptive injunction to stop all manual recounting of votes in Florida. On election night in November, television news networks initially declared that Gore had won Florida, despite several polls open in Republican-leaning districts, with voters still casting their ballots. If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked. 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. "[53], The ballot had been redesigned earlier that year by Theresa LePore (Supervisor of Elections and member of the Democratic Party). Thus the project included a sample within less than 1% of the expected total of votes.[78]. the same name, a blank space or a historical or fictional name (1): the same name, a blank space or an uncertified person's name, the same name, a blank space, a historical or fictional name or an uncertified person's name. So this week we begin again the arduous process of deciding how to count, and recount, Florida. On the other hand, the study also found that Gore probably would have won, by a range of 42 to 171 votes out of 6 million cast, had there been a broad recount of all disputed ballots statewide. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Bush, against Democrat Al Gore, former senator from Tennessee and vice president in the administration of. On the other hand, he said, Democrats talked like referees with a fear of pushing too hard, not wanting to be seen as sore losers. Charges of conflict of interest were leveled by both sidesBushs brother Jeb was the governor of the state and Secretary of State Katherine Harris was cochair of Bushs Florida campaign, while Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth headed the Gore campaign. [36], The project's goal was to determine the reliability and accuracy of the systems used in the voting process, including how different systems correlated with voter mistakes. India? 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. 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. The Gore campaign sued to force Miami-Dade County to continue its recount, but the Florida Supreme Court refused to consider the request. The only exception: African-Americans. Eventually, the Gore campaign appealed to the Florida Supreme Court, which ordered the recount to proceed. Bush ultimately prevailed after a strenuous fight, including an especially brutal effort by the Bush campaign in the South Carolina primary. To log in and use all the features of Khan Academy, please enable JavaScript in your browser. A nationwide December 1421, 2000 Harris poll asked, "If everyone who tried to vote in Florida had their votes counted for the candidate who they thought they were voting forwith no misleading ballots and infallible voting machineswho do you think would have won the election, George W. Bush or Al Gore?". What good and Ideas came from china ? That meant he would be president. Eventually, the Florida Supreme Court decided (43) to order a statewide manual recount of the approximately 45,000 undervotesballots that machines recorded as not clearly expressing a presidential voteand accepted some previously uncertified results in both Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, reducing Bushs lead to a mere 154 votes. As the manual recounts progressed, most of Florida's counties were considering overseas absentee ballots. But as more votes were counted, Bush edged into the lead later in the night, prompting networks to renounce their projections and name Florida as undecided. Then they called the Sunshine State for Bush, which was followed by a private concession by Gore that was itself soon rescinded. A: There is currently no strong evidence that acetaminophen use during pregnancy causes autism or ADHD in children. rejected by the Florida Supreme Court in its ruling of December 8, 2000, the lightly populated counties of Gadsden, Hamilton, Lafayette and Union. While Democrats did make their way down to Florida, there was nothing like the certainty or the passion that ignited Republicans. From affirmative action and hate-crime laws it's a small step to ensuring that all voters, however negligent, have their intent, however vague, reflected in the final result of an election. The Court further held that it had "considerable uncertainty" as to the reasons given by the Florida Supreme Court for its decision. Orange County presented fewer rejected ballots to the NORC than expected. At 4:00p.m. EST on December 8, the Florida Supreme Court, by a 4 to 3 vote, rejected Gore's original four-county approach and ordered a manual recount, under the supervision of the Leon County Circuit Court and Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho, of all undervoted ballots in all Florida counties (except Broward, Palm Beach and Volusia) and the portion of Miami-Dade county in which such a recount was not already complete. Salvado says that this alone cost Gore the election.