United States presidential election, 2000 Florida results

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The outcome of the United States presidential election, 2000 was not known for more than a month after the balloting, because of the extended process of counting and then recounting of Florida presidential ballots. State results tallied on election night gave 246 electoral votes to Bush and 255 to Gore, with New Mexico (5), Oregon (7), and Florida (25) too close to call that evening. Mathematically, Florida's 25 electoral votes became the key to an election win, and although both New Mexico and Oregon were declared in favor of Gore over the next few days, Florida's statewide vote took center stage even as voting continued in western states.

Contents

[edit] Timeline

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, an organization formed by them and the Associated Press to help determine the outcome of the election through early result tallies and exit polling) first called Florida for Gore in the hour after polls closed in the eastern peninsula but before they closed in the heavily Republican counties of the western panhandle. (The peninsula is in the Eastern time zone, while the panhandle is on Central time.) After the polls had closed in the panhandle, the networks retracted their call for Gore, calling the state for Bush; then retracted that call as well, finally indicating the state was "too close to call". Gore made a concession phone call to Bush the night of the election, then retracted it after learning just how close the election was.

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 three counties be recounted by hand. Florida state law at the time allowed the candidate to request a manual recount by protesting the results of at least three precincts.[1] The county canvassing board would then decide whether to recount as well as the method of the recount in those three precincts.[2] If the board discovered an error, they were then authorized to recount the ballots. [3]

The canvassing board did not discover any errors in the tabulation process in the initial mandated recount.

The Bush campaign sued to prevent additional recounts on the basis that no errors were found in the tabulation method until subjective measures were applied in manual recounts.

Bush won the election night vote count in Florida by a little over 2,000 votes. Florida state law provided for an automatic recount due to the small margins. 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 final (and disputed) official Florida count gave the victory to Bush by 537 votes, making it the tightest race of the campaign (at least in percentage terms; New Mexico was decided by 363 votes but has a much smaller population, meaning those 363 votes represent a 0.061% difference while the 537 votes in Florida are just 0.009%). Most of the reduction in the ensuing recount came from Miami-Dade county alone, a statistical anomaly.

Once the closeness of the election in Florida was clear, both the Bush and Gore campaigns organized themselves for the ensuing legal process. The Bush campaign hired George H. W. Bush's former Secretary of State James Baker to oversee their legal team, and the Gore campaign hired Bill Clinton's former Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

The Gore campaign, as allowed by Florida statute, requested that disputed ballots in four counties be counted by hand. Florida statutes also required that all counties certify and report their returns, including any recounts, by 5 p.m. on November 14. The manual recounts were time-consuming, and, when it became clear that some counties would not complete their recounts before the deadline, both Volusia and Palm Beach Counties sued to have their deadlines extended. The Bush campaign, in response to state litigation in the case of Palm Beach Canvassing Board v. Katherine Harris, filed suit in federal court against extending the statutory deadlines for the manual recounts. Besides deadlines, also in dispute were the criteria that each county's canvassing board would use in examining the overvotes and/or undervotes. 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 which ordered the recounting process to proceed. The Bush campaign subsequently appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) which took up the case Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board on December 1. On December 4, the SCOTUS returned this matter to the Florida Supreme Court for clarification due to their "considerable uncertainty" as to the reasons for certain aspects of the decision. The Florida Supreme Court clarified its ruling on this matter while the United States Supreme Court was deliberating Bush v. Gore.

At 4:00 p.m. EST on December 8, the Florida Supreme Court, by a 4 to 3 vote, ordered a manual recount, under the supervision of the Leon County Circuit Court, of disputed ballots in all Florida counties and the portion of Miami-Dade county in which such a recount was not already complete. That decision was announced on live world-wide television by the Florida Supreme Court's spokesman Craig Waters, the Court's public information officer. The Court further ordered that only undervotes be considered. The results of this tally were to be added to the November 14 tally. This count was in progress on December 9, when the United States Supreme Court 5-4 (Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer dissenting) granted Bush's emergency plea for a stay of the Florida Supreme Court recount ruling, stopping the incomplete recount, which had an unofficial lead of only 154 votes for Bush.

About 10 p.m. EST on December 12, the United States Supreme Court handed down its ruling in favor of Bush by a 5–4 vote, effectively ending the legal review of the vote count with Bush in the lead. Seven of the nine justices cited differing vote-counting standards from county to county and the lack of a single judicial officer to oversee the recount, both of which, they ruled, violated the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution.

This case eventually reached the United States Supreme Court, which ruled 5–4 to stop the vote recount, allowing Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris to certify the election results. This allowed Florida's electoral votes to be cast for Bush, making him the winner. Seven of the nine Justices agreed that the lack of unified standards in counting votes violated the Constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the laws, but five agreed that there was insufficient time to impose a unified standard and that the recounts should therefore be stopped.

The United States Supreme Court voted 7–2 to end the recount on the grounds that differing standards in different counties constituted an equal protection violation, and 5–4 that no new recount with uniform standards could be conducted within the time available. The 7–2 ruling was more important as the votes had already been counted several times with uniform standards. However, the 5–4 decision became extremely controversial due to the partisan split in the court's 5–4 decision and the majority's irregular instruction that its judgment in Bush v. Gore should not set precedent but should be "limited to the present circumstances". Gore publicly disagreed with the court's decision, but conceded the election "for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy".

See also: Bush v. Gore, Gore v. Harris (Harris II), and Palm Beach County Canvassing Board v. Harris (Harris I)
"Butterfly ballot"
"Butterfly ballot"

The Florida election has been closely scrutinized since the election, and several irregularities are thought to have favored Bush. These included the Palm Beach "butterfly ballot", which produced an unexpectedly large number of votes for third-party candidate Patrick Buchanan, and a purge of some 50,000 alleged felons from the Florida voting rolls that included many voters who were eligible to vote under Florida law. Some commentators still consider such irregularities and the legal maneuvering around the recounts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the vote, but as a matter of law the issue was settled when the United States Congress accepted Florida's electoral delegation.

Final certified vote for the state of Florida (25 electoral votes)
Presidential Candidate Vote Total % Party
George W. Bush (W) 2,912,790 48.850 Republican
Al Gore 2,912,253 48.841 Democratic
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 Law/Reform
Howard Phillips 1,378 0.023 Constitution
Other 3,027 0.051 —
Total 5,962,657
Source: CBS News State Results for Election 2000

However, data based on Federal Election Commission are slightly different:


Federal official vote for the state of Florida (25 electoral votes)
Presidential Candidate Vote Total % Party
George W. Bush (W) 2,912,790 48.847 Republican
Al Gore 2,912,253 48.838 Democratic
Ralph Nader 97,421 1.634 Green
Patrick J. Buchanan 17,484 0.293 Reform
Harry Browne 16,415 0.275 Libertarian
John Hagelin 2,281 0.038 Natural Law/Reform
Howard Phillips 1,378 0.023 Constitution
Other 3,028 0.051 —
Total 5,963,110
Source: 2000 OFFICIAL PRESIDENTIAL GENERAL ELECTION RESULTS

[edit] Controversial issues in Florida

Following the election a number of studies have been made of the electoral process in Florida by Democrats, Republicans, and other interested parties. A number of flaws and improprieties have been discovered in the process. Controversies included:

  • Numerous media outlets made the incorrect assumption that all of Florida's polls closed at 7:00 PM EST, which was not the case. Westernmost counties in Florida had polls open until 8:00 PM EST, as they were part of the Central Time Zone, so were open for one additional hour. This region of the state traditionally voted mostly Republican. Because of the above mistaken assumption, some media outlets reported at 7:00 PM EST that all polls had closed in the state of Florida. Also, significantly, the Voter News Service called the state of Florida for Al Gore at 7:48 PM EST. A survey estimate by John McLaughlin & Associates put the number of voters who did not vote due to confusion as high as 15,000, which theoretically reduced Bush's margin of victory by an estimated 5,000 votes. This survey assumes that the turnout in the Panhandle counties (which was 65% of the electorate) would have equalled the statewide average of 68% if the media had not incorrectly reported the polls' closing time and if the state had not been called for Gore while the polls were still open. This opens the possibility that Bush would have won by a larger victory margin and controversy would have been avoided if the networks had known and reported the correct poll closing times, and called the state after all polls were closed. At the urging of the Republican party, some individuals made public statements to the effect that they would have voted for Bush, but did not vote because of the poll close time confusion, or the Gore call. However, there is no known corroborative evidence of any widespread or localized disenfranchisement beyond these individual statements. It is worth noting that both parties had extensive field operations on the ground throughout Florida, including in the Panhandle. Both field operations heavily publicized the correct polling hours; and local government and media also would have publicized the poll-closing times before the election. Moreover, the polling hours in 2000 were the same as they had been in previous elections. These factors presumably to some extent mitigated the damage done by the erroneous reports on election night.
  • 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. While it is typical for sitting governors to strongly campaign on behalf of the candidate with the same party affiliation, it is unusual for the governor to be related by blood to the candidate and in a position to influence the election in his favor. Some democracy advocates have taken offense at his request for the removal of Florida election officials explaining voting/recount law on TV.
  • State senator Daryll Jones claimed that on the day of the election there had been an order to set up road blocks. These road blocks were set disproportionately in Democratic regions of the state.[5]
  • The actions of the Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, who was in charge of state election procedures, also came under fire, due to her status as a Bush state campaign co-chairwoman, her involvement with the "scrub list", and her behavior during the recount crisis. In particular democracy advocates have taken issue with her antagonizing of Democratic lawyers, dispatching of a lawyer to Palm Beach county to convince the voting board of voting down a manual recount (despite thousands of protesters within the county including 12,000 with affidavits), and in particular her collaboration with Republican party advisers (at one point housing them).
  • 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 absentee ballot applications; the Democrats moved to have the returned 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 predominantly white counties the voting machines (Accuvotes) would return the ballot and allow voters to try again, whereas in predominantly black counties the reject mechanisms were not enabled, thus giving voters only one chance to mark the ballot correctly.
  • Between May 1999 and Election Day 2000, two Florida secretaries of state - Sandra Mortham and Katherine Harris, contracted with a new company (DBT), at an increase of $4.294 million dollars to have the "scrub list"'s re-worked. Nearly 1 percent of Florida's electorate and nearly 3 percent of its African-American voters - 96,000 citizens were listed as felons and removed from the voting rolls. (For instance, many had names similar to actual felons, some listed "felonies" were dated years in the future, and some apparently were random.) In some cases, those on the scrub list were given several months to appeal, and many successfully reregistered and were allowed to vote. However, most were not told that they weren't allowed to vote until they were turned away at the polls. The company was directed not to use cross-checks or its sophisticated verification plan (used by the FBI). [8]
  • People like 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 two 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.
  • A full cousin of George W. Bush, John Prescott Ellis, was analyzing data from the Voter News Service for Fox News and had several times contact by telephone with both George and Jeb Bush that night. It was his decision to call Florida for Bush, with Fox being the first network to do so. However, Fox had also incorrectly called the state for Gore before the polls had closed, like the other networks, and retracted around the same time they did which was at around 10pm that evening. Fox only called the state for Bush at 2:16am, shortly after the famous Volusia error was introduced. This error took 16,022 votes away from Gore and added those votes and more to Bush, producing more total votes in the precinct than there were registered voters. The other major networks announced the same totals within minutes. The error was corrected quickly and the calls retracted one by one.
  • Xavier Suarez, who was ousted as mayor of Miami in 1998 on charges of absentee voter fraud, was later elected to the Executive Committee of the Miami-Dade GOP party. Suarez helped fill out absentee ballot forms and enlist Republican absentee voters in Miami-Dade County for the 2000 presidential election. “Dade County Republicans have a very specific expertise in getting out absentee ballots,” Suarez is claimed to have remarked. “I obviously have specific experience in this myself.” [9]
  • The "preppy riot": the manual recount in Miami-Dade County was shut down shortly after screaming protestors arrived at Miami's recount center. It turned out that these protesters were Republican Party members flown in from other states, some at Republican Party expense. [10]
  • The suppression of vote pairing. See the Wikipedia article on vote pairing for details. In brief, web sites sprang up to match Nader supporters in swing states like Florida with Gore supporters in non-swing states like Texas: the Nader supporters in Florida would vote for Gore and the Gore suporters in Texas would vote for Nader. This would have allowed Nader to still get his fair share of the vote and perhaps get into the Presidential debates, while also allowing Gore to carry swing states. Six Republican state secretaries of state, led by Bill Jones of California, threatened the web sites with criminal prosecution and caused some of them to reluctantly shut down. The ACLU got involved to protect the web sites, and the Federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Bill Jones two years later, but by then the election was over. The vote pairing web sites tallied 1,412 Nader supporters in Florida who vote paired for Gore, and if only a few more of the 97,421 people who did vote for Nader in Florida had known about vote pairing, the election might have had a different outcome.

[edit] Palm Beach County's butterfly ballots

The "butterfly ballot", seen at an angle
The "butterfly ballot", seen at an angle

The result of the Florida United States Presidential race was so close that one Florida county's ballots may have decided the presidency. Critics argue that some voters in Palm Beach County 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-hand column; but punching a hole in the second circle actually cast a vote for Buchanan, first listing in the right-hand column. Voters who punched this second hole would have ignored a prominent arrow on the ballot showing which hole was to be punched, because the design of the ballot neglected the effects of parallax due to the center row of holes being in a different plane from the two columns of printed names, and the ballot being viewed at an oblique angle.[11] Since this is actually quite a shallow angle, the parallax effect would not have been as severe as compared with the image on the right.

The Palm Beach Post's review of the discarded ballots showed that 5,330 votes were cast for the presumably rare cross-party combination of Gore and Buchanan, compared with only 1,631 for the equivalent cross-party combination of Bush and Buchanan. In response, others point out that the ballot was designed by a Democrat, Theresa LePore, and approved by representatives of both major parties.

Buchanan said on The Today Show, November 9, 2000:

When I took one look at that ballot on Election Night ... it's very easy for me to see how someone could have voted for me in the belief they voted for Al Gore.

He, unlike the voters, did not see the ballot before Election Night. Although Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said on November 9, 2000, "Palm Beach County is a Pat Buchanan stronghold and that's why Pat Buchanan received 3,407 votes there", Buchanan's Florida coordinator, Jim McConnell, responded, "That's nonsense", and Jim Cunningham, chairman of the executive committee of Palm Beach County's Reform Party, responded, "I don't think so. Not from where I'm sitting and what I'm looking at." Cunningham estimated the number of Buchanan supporters in Palm Beach County to be between 400 and 500. Asked how many votes he would guess Buchanan legitimately received in Palm Beach County, he said, "I think 1,000 would be generous. Do I believe that these people inadvertently cast their votes for Pat Buchanan? Yes, I do. We have to believe that based on the vote totals elsewhere."

[edit] Post-electoral studies/recounts

[edit] The Florida Ballot Project recounts

See also Florida election recount

The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, sponsored by a consortium of major United States news organizations, conducted a Florida Ballot Project comprehensive review of all ballots uncounted (by machine) in the Florida 2000 presidential election, both undervotes and overvotes, with the main research aim being to report how different ballot layouts correlate with voter mistakes. The total number of undervotes and overvotes in Florida amounted to 3% of all votes cast in the state. The findings of the review were reported by the media during the week after November 12, 2001.

The NORC study was not primarily intended as a determination of which candidate "really won". Analysis of the results found that different standards for the hand-counting of machine-uncountable ballots would lead to differing results. The results according to the various standards were reported in the newspapers which funded the recount, such as The Miami Herald [12] and the Washington Post. [13]

Candidate Outcomes Based on Potential Recounts in Florida Presidential Election 2000
(outcome of one particular study)
Review Method Winner
Review of All Ballots Statewide (never undertaken)  
•  Standard as set by each county Canvassing Board during their survey Gore by 171
•  Fully punched chads and limited marks on optical ballots Gore by 115
•  Any dimples or optical mark Gore by 107
•  One corner of chad detached or optical mark Gore by 60
Review of Limited Sets of Ballots (initiated but not completed)  
•  Gore request for recounts of all ballots in Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Volusia counties Bush by 225
•  Florida Supreme Court of all undervotes statewide Bush by 430
•  Florida Supreme Court as being implemented by the counties, some of whom refused and some counted overvotes as well as undervotes Bush by 493
Unofficial recount totals  
•  Incomplete result when the Supreme Court stayed the recount (December 9, 2000) Bush by 154
Certified Result (official final count)  
•  Recounts included from Volusia and Broward only Bush by 537

[edit] Media based

Following the election, recounts conducted by various United States news media organizations indicated that Bush would have won if certain recounting methods had been used (including the one favored by Gore at the time of the Supreme Court decision) but that Gore would have won had a full state-wide recount been conducted. [14]

After the election, USA Today, The Miami Herald, and Knight Ridder commissioned accounting firm BDO Seidman to count undervotes, that is, ballots which did not register any vote when counted by machine. 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 won by three votes.[15] Under all other standards, Bush won, with Bush's margin increasing as looser standards were used. The standards considered by BDO Seidman were:

  • Lenient standard. Any alteration in a chad, ranging from a dimple to a full punch, counts as a vote. By this standard, Bush won by 1,665 votes.
  • Palm Beach standard. A dimple is counted as a vote if other races on the same ballot show dimples as well. By this standard, Bush won by 884 votes.
  • Two-corner standard. A chad with two or more corners removed is counted as a vote. This is the most common standard in use. By this standard, Bush won by 363 votes.
  • Strict standard. Only a fully removed chad counts as a vote. By this standard, Gore won by 3 votes.

The study remarks that because of the possibility of mistakes, it is difficult to conclude that Gore was surely the winner under the strict standard. It also remarks that there are variations between examiners, and that election officials often did not provide the same number of undervotes as were counted on Election Day. Furthermore, the study did not consider overvotes, ballots which registered more than one vote when counted by machine.

The study also found that undervotes break down into two distinct types, those coming from punch-card using counties, and those coming from optical-scan using counties. Undervotes from punch-card using counties give new votes to candidates in roughly the same proportion as the county's official vote. Furthermore, the number of undervotes correlates with how well the punch-card machines are maintained, and not with factors such as race or socioeconomic status. Undervotes from optical-scan using counties, however, correlate with Democratic votes more than Republican votes. Optical-scan counties were the only places in the study where Gore gained more votes than Bush, 1,036 to 775.

A larger consortium of news organizations, including the USA Today, the Miami Herald, Knight Ridder, the Tampa Tribune, and five other newspapers next conducted a full recount of all ballots, including both undervotes and overvotes. According to their results, under stricter standards for vote counting, Bush won, and under looser standards, Gore won. [16] However, a Gore win was impossible without a recount of overvotes, which he did not request.

According to the study, only 3% of the 111,261 overvotes had markings that could be interpreted as a legal vote. According to Anthony Salvado, a political scientist at the University of California, Irvine, who acted as a consultant on the media recount, most of the errors were caused by ballot design, ballot wording, and efforts by voters to choose both a president and a vice-president. For example, 21,188 of the Florida overvotes, or nearly one-fifth of the total, originated from Duval County, where the presidential race was split across two pages. Voters were instructed to "vote every page". Half of the overvotes in Duval County had one presidential candidate marked on each page, making their vote illegal under Florida law. Salvado says that this error alone cost Gore the election.

Including overvotes in the above totals for undervotes gives different margins of victory:

  • Lenient standard. Gore by 332 votes.
  • Palm Beach standard. Gore by 242 votes.
  • Two-corner standard. Bush by 407 votes.
  • Strict standard. Bush by 152 votes.
Diagrams from The New York Times supporting its claim that a full state-wide recount under every scenario would have gone to Gore.
Diagrams from The New York Times supporting its claim that a full state-wide recount under every scenario would have gone to Gore.

[edit] References

  1. ^ F.S. Ch. 102.166
  2. ^ F.S. Ch. 102.166 Part 4
  3. ^ F.S. Ch. 102.166 Part 5
  4. ^ See Lawton Chiles#Judicial Appointments
  5. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1102806.stm
  6. ^ http://www.choicepoint.net/85256B350053E646/0/16440966B650DEA685256BEB00461242?Open
  7. ^ http://www.gwu.edu/~action/dojfl060702.html Letter to Congress]
  8. ^ http://dir.salon.com/story/politics/feature/2000/12/04/voter_file/index.html
  9. ^ http://www.campaignwatch.org/semdtl.htm
  10. ^ http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/28/miami/index.html
  11. ^ http://jerz.setonhill.edu/design/usability/use-ballot.htm
  12. ^ The Miami Herald Report: Democracy Held Hostage
  13. ^ http://www.aei.org/docLib/20040526_KeatingPaper.pdf]
  14. ^ http://www.amstat.org/misc/PresidentialElectionBallots.pdf (The American Statistitian, February 2003, Vol. 57, No.1)
  15. ^ http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2001-04-03-floridamain.htm
  16. ^ http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2001-05-10-recountmain.htm


United States presidential election, 2000
General election results • State results • Florida results
Key figures
Al Gore (presidential campaign) • George W. Bush (George W. Bush campaign) • Katherine Harris • Theresa LePore • David Boies • Joseph P. Klock • Theodore Olson • James Baker
Election Day
Florida Central Voter File (scrub list) • Volusia error • Chads • Butterfly ballot
Aftermath and legal proceedings
Florida election recount • Brooks Brothers riot • Palm Beach County Canvassing Board v. Harris (Harris I) • Gore v. Harris (Harris II) Bush v. Gore
Reaction
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy • The Betrayal of America • Fahrenheit 9/11 • Supreme Injustice • Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election
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