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The Presidential Election in 2000 (by Allison Martell)

Last issue, I wrote a brief overview of the American electoral system. My aim wasn’t to prepare you for your future political science degree; it had more to do with understanding the upcoming American presidential election. This month, I’ve flipped back in time to the 2000 presidential election. So why am I concentrating on what happened four years ago? By any evaluation, the 2000 election was an unimaginably close race. It was so close, in fact, that it spawned confusion, anger, several important court rulings and allegations of corruption within the American political and judicial systems.

What Happened, Step by Step

Republican George W. Bush, governor of Texas, and Democratic Vice President Al Gore won their parties’ presidential nominations without much controversy. Bush’s major opponent was Senator John McCain and Gore’s main adversary was Bill Bradley. By March 9, 2000, both McCain and Bradley had withdrawn from their races. In early August, Bush and Gore picked as running mates Dick Cheney and Joseph Lieberman, respectively. 

Throughout the campaign, polls reported that the Democrats and Republicans were extremely close. Many polls, including several in October and November, said that the election was too close to call. In early October, campaigning in Florida picked up. Florida was a swing state – one that could vote Democratic or Republican – and since Florida had 25 votes at the Electoral College, this was an important uncertainty. 

On election night, most television coverage started at 7pm. At around 8pm, the networks called Florida, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, three of the most important swing states, in Gore’s favour. Gore’s supporters began celebrating. Shortly before 10pm, the networks moved Florida from Gore’s column to “undecided”, blaming their switch on a calculation error by the Voter News Service, where most of them got their projections. As results from other states came in, the race became completely focused on Florida. Bush had 246 electoral votes, and Gore had 267 – to win the election, one of them would need 270 votes. Fox news was the first to call the election in Bush’s favour. Associated Press refused to follow Fox’s lead, but most of the other networks were less careful. At the end of a very long night, Bush lead by 1784 votes. Because the difference was only 0.3%, Florida automatically ordered recounts. Ballots did not, however, have to be counted by hand.

The next morning, Gore’s team requested a manual recount of four key Democratic counties in Florida that had used punch-card ballots and counted them with machines. The legal battles began almost immediately. On November 11, Bush’s campaign filed a lawsuit to stop manual recounts, claiming that they violated the right to equal protection and equal process. In the meantime, Katherine Harris, Florida secretary of state, said that all recounts must be finished by November 14th. A Florida judge ruled that Harris had to use “reasonable discretion” in rejecting recounts submitted past the deadline. 

By November 14th, Bush’s lead had diminished to 300 votes. Katherine Harris declared these votes official, and said that she will only add overseas absentee ballots. On November 18, these (mostly military) absentee ballots increase Bush’s lead to 930. Several days later, the Florida Supreme Court ordered Harris to accept recounts submitted before November 26th. Miami-Dade county said that they could not complete the manual recounts on time and stopped them altogether. On November 26th, the votes were certified as final; Bush’s lead was 537 votes. 

Unbelievably, things weren’t over yet. On December 9th, the Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide recount of all ballots that did not record a vote when counted by machine. It granted Gore 383 more votes from recounts in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade that had been rejected by Katherine Harris for arriving too late. Bush’s lead shrank to 154 votes. 

On December 8th, the U.S. Supreme Court issued and injunction to stop the new manual recounts. It said that inconsistent methods of ballot evaluation throughout the state violated citizens’ rights to equal protection and equal process. Its ruling was restricted to this particular case, so it could not be used later on to require that all counties use the same ballot design or voting machines. Within days, Gore conceded the election. 

Suspect Connections

Much has been made of several possible conflicts of interest. They are as follows:

Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris - oversaw the election while also serving as the co-director of Bush’s presidential campaign in Florida.

Governor Jeb Bush - Governor of Florida and younger brother of George W. was the other co-director of Bush’s campaign. 

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas – supported the ruling on December 9th and was married to Virginia Thomas, an employee at the Heritage foundation (a right-wing think tank) who apparently stood to benefit substantially from a Republican victory.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia - lead lawyer for the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore was Theodore B. Olsen, boss of Scalia’s son. Scalia also supported the December 9th ruling. 

Undervotes

In the United States, individual counties run their own voting systems. This means that every county in the country has a slightly different ballot, voting system, and procedure.

Several counties in Florida employed punch card voting machines, where voters use a small stylus to punch out part of the ballot and indicate their choice. Many of the machines used were old, and some hadn’t been cleaned for several years. Some of them were so clogged with “chads” (the small bits of paper pushed out of ballots) that new ballots couldn’t be completely punched. Chads were left attached by one corner, two corners, three corners, or attached by all corners and indented slightly where a stylus had been pushed in. In general, the machines that counted the cards recorded any attached chad as a vote for no one, or an “undervote”. Under Florida law, ballots should be evaluated for the voter’s “intention”, but there was much disagreement over what constituted intention. Was a hanging chad an intended vote? What about an indented chad? This inconsistency from county to county was part of the basis for the final Supreme Court ruling over equal protection and equal process. 

Some undervotes were undoubtedly protests, made by voters who didn’t intend to indicate any candidate. But how many were the fault of badly designed ballots? One thing we do know is that in the 1996 election, punch card ballots were undervotes 2.6% of the time, while optical scan ballots (where voters colour in a small oval) were undervotes only 0.2% of the time.

In Florida, there were 64 248 punch card undervotes. If the ballots had been evaluated with the most lenient standards, Bush would have won by 1 665 votes. If elections officials had required that two corners of the chad be detached, Bush would have won by 363 votes. Ironically, if the recount had gone by the strict standards campaigned for by the Republicans – that only completely detached chads be counted – Bush would have won by three lonely votes. As it happened, the few recounts that went ahead used different standards. 

Votes for Buchanan

On the infamous Palm Beach county butterfly ballot, presidential candidates were listed on two facing pages, and voters had to push out chads between the lists (see photograph). Some voters, seeing that Al Gore was the second candidate on the list, punched out the second chad. Unfortunately, the second chad belonged to Pat Buchanan, a right wing candidate on the right hand page of the ballot. 

Buchanan received 3 704 votes in Palm Beach, where the faulty butterfly ballot was used. He received only 561 votes in Miami-Dade, and 798 votes in Broward, both of which are larger counties. If we assume that only 798 Palm Beach voters intended to vote for Buchanan, then Gore gains 2 906 votes.

Overvotes

Some voters in Palm Beach, after accidentally pressing in Buchanan’s chad, also pressed in Gore’s chad. Since these ballots marked two candidates, they were ignored. Let us consider the 5 264 ballots that were marked for both Gore and Buchanan, and ignore those that were marked for Gore and another candidate. If we make the somewhat shaky assumption that those mistaken votes were all intended for either Gore or Buchanan, and that they were proportioned the way that Gore and Buchanan’s votes were in the rest of the country, we can consider 99% of them votes for Gore. That’s 5 211 more votes for Gore, a number large enough to leave room for some error. 

Several other counties listed presidential candidates on two pages. The instructions on these ballots said to “mark a vote on each page”, but voters who marked a presidential vote on each of the two pages were ignored. Little specific data is available on these “caterpillar ballots”. 

Military Votes

Absentee ballots, mostly from military voters, were counted despite some serious problems. The New York Times reported that 816 illegal ballots were counted, including those from unregistered voters, those that could have been cast after election day, and those from several citizens who voted twice. The addition of absentee ballots added 930 votes to Bush’s lead, so it’s safe to assume that the majority of these illegal votes were for Bush.

Purged Voters

An important angle that has been ignored in much of the mainstream news media is the systematic purge of supposed felons from the voting lists in Florida. In Florida, felons do not regain their voting rights once they have served time and moved on. Before the 2000 election, the state of Florida signed a $4 million contract with Database Technologies to find the names of felons still on the voting list and remove them. 

Database Technologies was told not to match records exactly. If 80% of the information matched, the state said, the names should be removed. Database Technologies sent a memo, warning that “programming in this fashion may supply you with false positives.” The state replied that they “want[ed] to capture more names that possibly aren’t matches.” 

Database Technologies later released a report which revealed that of the 94 000 citizens targeted, 91 000 were completely innocent. So why is this particularly significant? 54-66% of the voters on the list were Black, and about 90% of Black citizens vote Democratic. 

Early in voting purge, the state of Texas (Bush’s home state) helpfully sent Florida a list of citizens who had committed crimes in that state and not had their voting rights reinstated. Shortly thereafter, someone discovered that a mistake had been made – in fact, the whole list was false. Not one of the 8 000 citizens on the list was to be purged from the voting list. One elections official found a chilling discrepancy in his county’s list. 54% of the voters on the list were Black; only 11% of the citizens in the county were Black.

In addition, 2 883 of the illegally purged voters were from other states where their voting rights had been reinstated. When this problem was pointed out, Jeb Bush sent a letter stating that felons from other states would have to apply to have their voting rights reinstated in Florida. This goes against the rulings of several courts. 90% of felons vote Democratic. 

Let us only take into account the 91 000 innocent citizens purged from the Florida voter list. At least 54%, or 49 104 of those were Black. If we multiply this number by 68.1% (the voter turnout among registered voters in Florida in 2000) we get 33 439 people. Assume that 90% of these people would have voted for Gore, and we can award him an incredible 30 095 votes. 

Why Are You Telling Me This?

It’s hard enough to distill this much information into a single article, let alone information about the whole 2000 election. This article could have focused more on policies, campaign strategies or campaign budgets. Time could have been spent on the Green party, which faced quite a bit of controversy for “vote splitting” the left wing and, according to some, stealing precious Democratic votes.

There are many issues at hand when exploring this topic, but the underlying purpose of this article is to show that the United States doesn’t always have fair elections; that power and history doesn’t make a democracy infallible; that fine print can be important; and that the mainstream media doesn’t tell the full story. This is knowledge to take to all of our countries, elections, and lives. 

Sources

Ceasar, J.W., and Busch, A.E. The Perfect Tie: The True Story of the 2000 Presidential Election. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2001.

Dover, E.D. The Disputed Presidential Election of 2000. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2003.

“Florida Ballots Project.” CNN.com.  2001. 26 September 2004. <http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/florida.ballots/stories/main.html>.

Greene, A. Understanding the 2000 Election. New York: New York University Press, 2001.

Moore, M. Stupid White Men… and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation! New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 2001.

Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election [film]. N.p.: Sony, 2002. 

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