The 2000 Presidential Election

What started out as just another presidential election ended up becoming one of this country’s most dramatic showdowns in recent political history.

	Source: presidentialelection2000.com

It all started in the state of Florida. In 2000, with 25 electoral votes up for grabs, Florida was a key state to target during presidential campaigning. It was predicted that it would be a close race between Texas governor George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore, but not even the two candidates could have predicted just how close it would be. Earlier national polls showed Bush taking a small lead in the race. However, on the day of the election, Bush took a dip in the polls and Gore gained some popularity. On election night, exit polls predicted Bush would be our next president. With the popular votes tallied in most states, the nation waited for Florida’s voting results. The news media prematurely announced Gore as the winner in Florida, only to withdraw that announcement a couple of hours later and give Bush the title.

Bush’s win over Gore in Florida was by such a slim margin that state law required the votes to be automatically recounted. Lawyers for both the Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate were present for the recounts and arguments from both parties immediately followed. From that moment on, charges ranging from faulty voting machines to the fairness of the Electoral College were echoed.

Gore/Lieberman Election Campaign Logo

Though Gore won the popular vote by more than a half million national votes, Bush won the national election with 271 electoral votes to Gore’s 267. This confused many Americans because they were focusing on the popular vote rather than the electoral vote. Everyone wanted to know: How did George W. Bush win the presidential election if he wasn’t the most popular candidate?

Americans quickly got a lesson in Electoral College 101, but that didn’t put an end to the questions, at least the ones the candidates were asking. Confusing ballots and defective voting machines were partially to blame for the uproar.

	Bush/Cheney Election Campaign Logo

Many voters complained that their punch card ballots confused them by having candidates on both the right and left sides of the ballot with the punch holes in the middle. These types of ballots are called “butterfly ballots” because they open like a book and have options on both sides of the page. As a result, voters chose more than one candidate. Also, some stylus did not go through the punch hole all the way and left the chad incomplete.

A “chad” is the little round piece of paper that is created after a vote has been made using a punch hole voting machine. The term “chad” was coined in 1947 by an unknown source; what seems like a simple concept, however caused more than its share of drama

	Five Types of Chads.

and headache during the 2000 Presidential Election. When the chads are not punched through completely, many problems can arise. For example, if one corner of the chad is dangling from the punch card it’s called a hanging chad. Swinging chads have two corners still attached to the card. Tri chads have three corners attached even though the hole has been thoroughly punched. If an indent has been made, but no hole was formed, it’s a dimpled chad. A pregnant chad is a hole that has been punched through but all four sides of it still remains attached. When voters don’t push hard enough so that the holes break away from the punch card, they are left attached, and when fed through the vote-tabulating machine, they can be pushed back into the hole and misread or not read at all.

The Gore team believed that recounting the votes by hand was the only way to find out who truly won the election, whereas Bush’s team believed hand-counting votes was

President George W. Bush Source: White House Photo by Eric Draper

biased and that votes tallied by an automated machine was the only fair way to choose a winner.

After much debate, many trips to the Florida Supreme Court and, eventually, a visit to the United States Supreme Court, Bush was declared the winner in Florida with 2,912,790 to Gore’s 2,912,253—a difference of 537 votes.