United States presidential election in Florida, 2000
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The outcome of the 2000 United States presidential election was not known for more than a month after 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 Republican candidate George W. Bush and 255 to Democratic nominee Al 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. The debacle led to calls for electoral reform in Florida.
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[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".[1] In an editorial in National Review magazine, Tim Graham, director of media analysis for the Media Research Center, claimed that the media's premature call for Gore's victory in Florida might have disenfranchised many pro-Bush voters in the Panhandle.[2] Gore made a concession phone call to Bush the night of the election, then retracted it after learning just how close the election was.[3]
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.[4] The county canvassing board would then decide whether to recount as well as the method of the recount in those three precincts.[5] If the board discovered an error, they were then authorized to recount the ballots.[6]
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 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 with an order vacating its earlier decision. In its opinion, the Supreme Court cited several areas where the Florida Supreme Court had violated both the federal and Florida constitutions. The Court further held that it had "considerable uncertainty" as to the reasons given by the Florida Supreme Court for its 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 and Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho, 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 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 7–2 vote that the Florida Supreme Court's scheme for recounting ballots was unconstitutional, as well as a 5-4 United States Supreme Court decision that ended the Florida recounts and allowed Florida to certify its 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 ruling stopped 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 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.
- See also: Bush v. Gore, Gore v. Harris (Harris II), and Palm Beach County Canvassing Board v. Harris (Harris I)
[edit] Irregularities
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, which were nearly half African-American voters and the majority of whom were not felons and should have been eligible to vote under Florida law.
[edit] Final certified vote
| 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:
| 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:
- All five major networks made the incorrect assumption that all of Florida's polls closed at 7:00 p.m. EST , which was not the case. All five of them reported this incorrect statement at the top of the 6:00-7:00 hour. Westernmost counties in Florida had polls open until 8:00 p.m. 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 p.m. 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 p.m. 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;[7] a study by John Lott found that Bush's margin of victory was reduced by 7,500 votes.[8] 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. 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.
- 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 would win Florida. While it is typical for sitting governors to campaign strongly 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 Daryl Jones said [that on the day of the election] there had to have been an order for them to set up road-blocks [in heavily Democratic regions of the state].[9]
- 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-chairman, 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, her 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 because they are not required to have postmarks to be legal mail.
- A suit by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) (NAACP v. Harris) argued that Florida was in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the United States Constitution's Equal Protection Amendment. Settlement agreements were reached in this suit.[10] However, a systematic investigation by the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice found no evidence of racial discrimination.[11]
- Between May 1999 and Election Day 2000, two Florida secretaries of state - Sandra Mortham and Katherine Harris, contracted with a new company (DBT Online Inc.), at an increase of $4.294 million to have the "scrub list"'s re-worked. Nearly 1% of Florida's electorate and nearly 3% 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).[12]
- 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 10 p.m. that evening. Fox only called the state for Bush at 2:16 a.m., 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 Republican 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.”[13]
- 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.[14]
- The suppression of vote pairing. 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 supporters 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 reluctantly to 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
One controversial aspect of the Florida recount was an unexpectedly large number of votes for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan in Palm Beach County. Early reports had Buchanan receiving about 0.8% of the vote in Palm Beach County (a total of 3,407 votes), significantly outperforming his state-wide vote share of 0.29%. Representatives of Buchanan's campaign and the Reform Party estimated Buchanan's true vote total at between 400 and 1,000 votes. A later review of discarded ballots in Palm Beach County by the The Palm Beach Post 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. The number of votes that may have been mistakenly cast for Buchanan was well in excess of George W. Bush's certified margin of victory.
One theory is that voters might have accidentally voted for 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. If the machine loading the ballot did not line it up with the candidates properly, then it became confusing for the voter to discern where they should punch the hole. Voters who punched the second hole would have ignored an arrow on the ballot showing which hole was to be punched if the arrow did not line up with the hole correctly due to machine error, 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.[15] 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.
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."
In response, others point out that the ballot was designed by a Republican who had recently switched party to Democrat, Theresa LePore, and approved by representatives of both major parties.
[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[16] and the Washington Post.[17]
| 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.[18]
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.[19] 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.[20] However, a Gore win was impossible without a recount of overvotes, which he did not request, but may have occurred, as faxes discovered after the media recount, being sent to and from Judge Terry Lewis to canvassing boards around Florida, who was overseeing the recount effort were discovered by indicated that Judge Lewis clearly intended to have the overvotes counted, in which case Gore emerges the victor.[21]
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.
[edit] Opinion polling
A nationwide December 14–21, 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 for -- with no misleading ballots and infallible voting machines -- who do you think would have won the election, George W. Bush or Al Gore?". The results were 49% for Gore and 40% for Bush.[22]
[edit] Results by county
| County | Bush # | Bush % | Gore # | Gore % | Nader # | Nader % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miami-Dade | Gore 328,867 (53%); Bush 289,574 (46%); Nader 5,352 (1%). | |||||
| Broward | Gore 387,760 (67%); Bush 177,939 (31%); Nader 7,101 (1%). | |||||
| Palm Beach | Gore 269,754 (62%); Bush 152,964 (35%); Nader 5,564 (1%). | |||||
| Pinellas | Gore 200,657 (50%); Bush 184,849 (46%); Nader 10,022 (3%). | |||||
| Hillsborough | Bush 180,794 (50%); Gore 169,576 (47%); Nader 7,496 (2%). | |||||
| Orange | Gore 140,236 (50%); Bush 134,531 (48%); Nader 3,879 (1%). | |||||
| Duval | Bush 152,460 (58%); Gore 108,039 (41%); Nader 2,757 (1%). | |||||
| Brevard | Bush 115,253 (53%); Gore 97,341 (45%); Nader 4,470 (2%). | |||||
| Lee | Bush 106,151 (58%); Gore 73,571 (40%); Nader 3,588 (2%). | |||||
| Volusia | Gore 97,313 (53%); Bush 82,368 (45%); Nader 2,903 (2%). | |||||
| Polk | Bush 90,310 (54%); Gore 75,207 (45%); Nader 2,060 (1%). | |||||
| Sarasota | Bush 83,117 (52%); Gore 72,869 (45%); Nader 4,069 (3%). | |||||
| Pasco | Gore 69,576 (49%); Bush 68,607 (48%); Nader 3,393 (2%). | |||||
| Seminole | Bush 75,790 (55%); Gore 59,227 (43%); Nader 1,940 (1%). | |||||
| Escambia | Bush 73,171 (63%); Gore 40,990 (35%); Nader 1,727 (2%). | |||||
| Manatee | Bush 58,023 (53%); Gore 49,226 (45%); Nader 2,491 (2%). | |||||
| Leon | Gore 61,444 (60%); Bush 39,073 (38%); Nader 1,934 (2%). | |||||
| Marion | Bush 55,146 (54%); Gore 44,674 (44%); Nader 1,809 (2%). | |||||
| Collier | Bush 60,467 (66%); Gore 29,939 (33%); Nader 1,399 (2%). | |||||
| Lake | Bush 50,010 (56%); Gore 36,571 (41%); Nader 1,460 (2%). | |||||
| Alachua | Gore 47,380 (55%); Bush 34,135 (40%); Nader 3,226 (4%). | |||||
| St. Lucie | Gore 41,560 (53%); Bush 34,705 (45%); Nader 1,368 (2%). | |||||
| Okaloosa | Bush 52,186 (74%); Gore 16,989 (24%); Nader 985 (1%). | |||||
| Charlotte | Bush 35,428 (53%); Gore 29,636 (44%); Nader 1,461 (2%). | |||||
| Hernando | Gore 32,648 (50%); Bush 30,658 (47%); Nader 1,501 (2%). | |||||
| Martin | Bush 33,972 (55%); Gore 26,621 (43%); Nader 1,118 (2%). | |||||
| St. Johns | Bush 39,564 (65%); Gore 19,509 (32%); Nader 1,217 (2%). | |||||
| Bay | Bush 38,682 (66%); Gore 18,873 (32%); Nader 828 (1%). | |||||
| Clay | Bush 41,903 (73%); Gore 14,668 (26%); Nader 562 (1%). | |||||
| Citrus | Bush 29,801 (52%); Gore 25,531 (45%); Nader 1,379 (2%). | |||||
| Osceola | Gore 28,187 (51%); Bush 26,237 (47%); Nader 732 (1%). | |||||
| Santa Rosa | Bush 36,339 (72%); Gore 12,818 (25%); Nader 724 (1%). | |||||
| Indian River | Bush 28,639 (58%); Gore 19,769 (40%); Nader 950 (2%). | |||||
| Highlands | Bush 20,207 (58%); Gore 14,169 (40%); Nader 545 (2%). | |||||
| Monroe | Gore 16,487 (49%); Bush 16,063 (47%); Nader 1,090 (3%). | |||||
| Flagler | Gore 13,897 (51%); Bush 12,618 (47%); Nader 435 (2%). | |||||
| Putnam | Bush 13,457 (51%); Gore 12,107 (46%); Nader 377 (1%). | |||||
| Nassau | Bush 16,408 (69%); Gore 6,955 (29%); Nader 255 (1%). | |||||
| Sumter | Bush 12,127 (55%); Gore 9,637 (43%); Nader 306 (1%). | |||||
| Columbia | Bush 10,968 (59%); Gore 7,049 (38%); Nader 258 (1%). | |||||
| Walton | Bush 12,186 (67%); Gore 5,643 (31%); Nader 265 (1%). | |||||
| Jackson | Bush 9,139 (56%); Gore 6,870 (42%); Nader 138 (1%). | |||||
| Gadsden | Gore 9,736 (66%); Bush 4,770 (32%); Nader 139 (1%). | |||||
| Levy | Bush 6,863 (54%); Gore 5,398 (42%); Nader 284 (2%). | |||||
| Suwannee | Bush 8,009 (64%); Gore 4,075 (33%); Nader 180 (1%). | |||||
| Okeechobee | Bush 5,057 (51%); Gore 4,589 (47%); Nader 131 (1%). | |||||
| Bradford | Bush 5,416 (62%); Gore 3,075 (35%); Nader 84 (1%). | |||||
| Wakulla | Bush 4,512 (53%); Gore 3,838 (45%); Nader 149 (2%). | |||||
| Baker | Bush 5,611 (69%); Gore 2,392 (29%); Nader 53 (1%). | |||||
| Hendry | Bush 4,747 (58%); Gore 3,240 (40%); Nader 104 (1%). | |||||
| Washington | Bush 4,995 (62%); Gore 2,798 (35%); Nader 93 (1%). | |||||
| De Soto | Bush 4,256 (55%); Gore 3,321 (43%); Nader 157 (2%). | |||||
| Holmes | Bush 5,012 (68%); Gore 2,177 (29%); Nader 94 (1%). | |||||
| Taylor | Bush 4,058 (60%); Gore 2,649 (39%); Nader 59 (1%). | |||||
| Hardee | Bush 3,765 (60%); Gore 2,342 (38%); Nader 75 (1%). | |||||
| Madison | Bush 3,038 (49%); Gore 3,015 (49%); Nader 54 (1%). | |||||
| Gulf | Bush 3,553 (58%); Gore 2,398 (39%); Nader 86 (1%). | |||||
| Jefferson | Gore 3,041 (54%); Bush 2,478 (44%); Nader 76 (1%). | |||||
| Gilchrist | Bush 3,300 (61%); Gore 1,910 (35%); Nader 97 (2%). | |||||
| Calhoun | Bush 2,873 (56%); Gore 2,156 (42%); Nader 39 (1%). | |||||
| Dixie | Bush 2,697 (58%); Gore 1,827 (39%); Nader 75 (2%). | |||||
| Franklin | Bush 2,454 (53%); Gore 2,047 (44%); Nader 85 (2%). | |||||
| Hamilton | Bush 2,147 (54%); Gore 1,723 (43%); Nader 37 (1%). | |||||
| Union | Bush 2,332 (61%); Gore 1,407 (37%); Buchanan 37 (1%). | |||||
| Glades | Bush 1,841 (55%); Gore 1,442 (43%); Nader 56 (2%). | |||||
| Lafayette | Bush 1,670 (67%); Gore 789 (32%); Nader 26 (1%). | |||||
| Liberty | Bush 1,317 (55%); Gore 1,017 (42%); Buchanan 39 (2%). |
[edit] References
[edit] Further reading
- Ceaser, James W. & Busch, Andrew (2001), The Perfect Tie: The True Story of the 2000 Presidential Election, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, ISBN 0742508366, <http://books.google.com/books?id=ALcmhxK0rPAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=perfect+tie&sig=OHBHarcc0vvDN-7UsBbp9YVHh70>
- Keating, Dan and Balz, Dan. "Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush."[[1]] The Washington Post, published Nov. 12, 2001.
[edit] Citations
- ^ Ceaser & Busch 2001, pp. 252-253
- ^ Graham, Tim (2000-11-20). TV News in Deep Gumbo. National Review. Media Research Center. Retrieved on 2008-04-04.
- ^ Memorable Presidential Elections. The History Channel. Miller Center of Public Affairs (2003). Retrieved on 2008-04-05.
- ^ F.S. Ch. 102.166
- ^ F.S. Ch. 102.166 Part 4
- ^ F.S. Ch. 102.166 Part 5
- ^ Panhandle Poll Follow-up: Networks' Wrong Florida Call for Gore Depressed Voter Turnout in Florida's Central Time Zone. John McLaughlin & Associates (December 6, 2000).
- ^ Lott, John R., Jr. (May 8, 2001). Documenting Unusual Declines in Republican Voting Rates in Florida's Western Panhandle Counties in 2000. University of Maryland Foundation, University of Maryland.
- ^ Brabant, Malcolm. "Bush's brother to face vote inquiry", BBC News, 5 January 2001.
- ^ ChoicePoint (July 2, 2002). "NAACP and Florida Voters Reach Agreement with ChoicePoint in Voting Rights Lawsuit: ChoicePoint to Make Donation to NAACP and Reprocess Voter Exception List". Press release.
- ^ Boyd, Ralph F. Jr., Assistant Attorney General (June 2, 2002). Letter to Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman, U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
- ^ Palas, Gregory (December 4, 2000). Florida's flawed "voter-cleansing" program. Salon.com. “Secretary of State Katherine Harris hired a firm to vet the rolls for felons, but that may have wrongly kept thousands, particularly blacks, from casting ballots.”
- ^ Seminole Case details. CampaignWatch.
- ^ Lantigua, John (November 28, 2000). Miami's rent-a-riot. Salon.com. “Remember last week's ugly protest of the hand recount? Elián all over? Guess again — Washington GOP operatives were running this circus.”
- ^ Election 2000 Ballot Design: Why Usability Testing Matters.
- ^ The Miami Herald Report: Democracy Held Hostage
- ^ Democracy Counts (PDF).
- ^ http://www.amstat.org/misc/PresidentialElectionBallots.pdf (The American Statistitian, February 2003, Vol. 57, No.1)
- ^ Newspapers' recount shows Bush prevailed.
- ^ Florida voter errors cost Gore the election.
- ^ http://www.newsweek.com/id/76207/page/1 The Final Word? New Documents Raise Questions About News Media's Findings On The 2000 Presidential Election
- ^ The Long Count.
[edit] External links
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