Gore’s Victory ☀
FACT: Al Gore received more votes than George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election — nationwide and in Florida.
sds wrote:
squashed wrote:
It’s conventional wisdom in left-leaning circles that George Bush lost the election but became President anyway due to a series of dirty Republican tricks and the complicty of a biased Supreme Court. It’s a convenient story—but it isn’t really true.
Three things happened in the 2000 election:
- George Bush won a majority of the electoral votes—which means he won the election.
- Al Gore won the popular vote. That and a buck fifty will buy a cup of coffee.
- We heard a lot of stuff about Florida. Something, apparently, was seriously wrong with Floridians—but they still get to vote, even if they (evidently) have trouble with the mechanics of it.
The results in Florida, however you count them, were incredibly tight. They were initially counted—and Bush won. If some ballots had been designed differently, perhaps Gore would have won. If fewer absentee ballots had been disqualified, perhaps Bush would have won by a greater margin. If the weather had been different, perhaps Gore would have won. If Miami had had particularly bad traffic, Bush would have won by a greater margin.
Then there was a mess of legal wrangling. Gore wanted a selective recount in counties where he had done well. Treating some ballots differently than others is a huge electoral no-no and Gore didn’t get this. If he had, he still would have lost. Eventually the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the recounting. Was it a partisan decision? Were the judges biased? Maybe. Or maybe they just split the same way they frequently split. And once the Supreme Court had spoken, people accepted their result. The process was followed. There were no riots.
And what if Gore had gotten his recount as requested? It still wouldn’t have been enough. Is there any sort of recount method where Gore could have won? There are a few—though there are more where Bush won. If some ballots had been designed differently, could gore have won? Probably—though if other ballots had been designed differently, perhaps Bush would have gotten an edge. Ultimately, though, there was an established process. The process was followed. We elected Bush. Even those who claim we elected Gore (mostly) know that the claim is dubious at best.
The claim in Iran is different. The claim is that the vote totals were fabricated or that ballots were deliberately tampered with or destroyed. In Florida, the problem was poor ballot design and a poorly handled recount process. Outside the conspiracy theories, there was very little suggestion of actual malice.
I appreciate your fair and non-hysterical treatment of this issue. The truth is that there was no conspiracy, no stolen election. The main issue in Florida is that Gore wanted to change the rules in the middle of the game and, regardless of whether there ended up being some disenfranchisement, the rules had to be followed. If the rules are unfair (a point which I have no problem conceding), they should be changed before or after an election. You don’t change horses mid-stream, to borrow a very old metaphor. Many democrats vilified Katherine Harris, but all she did was impartially follow the letter of Florida’s election laws. And the Supreme Court upheld the same.
The new, fuller study found that Gore won regardless of which standard was applied and even when varying county judgments were factored in. Counting fully punched chads and limited marks on optical ballots, Gore won by 115 votes. With any dimple or optical mark, Gore won by 107 votes. With one corner of a chad detached or any optical mark, Gore won by 60 votes. Applying the standards set by each county, Gore won by 171 votes.
This core finding of Gore’s Florida victory in the unofficial ballot recount might surprise many readers who skimmed only the headlines and the top paragraphs of the articles. The headlines and leads highlighted hypothetical, partial recounts that supposedly favored Bush.
Buried deeper in the stories or referenced in subheads was the fact that the new recount determined that Gore was the winner statewide, even ignoring the “butterfly ballot” and other irregularities that cost him thousands of ballots.
Yes, I realize that the partial recount strategy Gore was pursuing would have not changed the outcome. But a full state recount would have delivered the presidency to Gore.
And that is before considering all the other dirty shenanigans employed by Republicans — the over zealous felon lists that nullified valid voters, the supression of minority voters (of which later civil judicial proceedings awarded settlements), misapplication of overseas ballots (in Democratic favoring precincts, the letter of the law was strictly adhered to, whereas in Republican favoring precincts, ballot admission standards were waived), etc.…
