https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000
Aftermath[edit]
After Florida was decided and Gore conceded, Texas Governor George W. Bush became the president-elect and began forming his transition committee.[66] In a speech on December 13, in the Texas House of Representatives chamber,[67] Bush stated he was reaching across party lines to bridge a divided America, saying, "the President of the United States is the President of every single American, of every race, and every background."[68]
Post recount[edit]
On January 6, 2001, a joint session of Congress met to certify the electoral vote. Twenty members of the House of Representatives, most of them Democratic members of the Congressional Black Caucus, rose one-by-one to file objections to the electoral votes of Florida. However, pursuant to the Electoral Count Act of 1887, any such objection had to be sponsored by both a representative and a senator. No senator would co-sponsor these objections, deferring to the Supreme Court's ruling. Therefore, Gore, who presided in his capacity as President of the Senate, ruled each of these objections out of order.[69]
Subsequently, the joint session of Congress certified the electoral votes from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Bush took the oath of office on January 20, 2001. He would serve for the next eight years. Gore declined to run for president in 2004 and 2008.
The first independent recount was conducted by the Miami Herald and USA Today. The commission found that under most recount scenarios, Bush would have won the election, but Gore would have won using the most generous standards.[70]
Ultimately, a media consortium—comprising the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Tribune Co. (parent of the Los Angeles Times), Associated Press, CNN, Palm Beach Post and St. Petersburg Times[71]—hired the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago[72] to examine 175,010 ballots that were collected from the entire state, not just the disputed counties that were discounted; these ballots contained undervotes (votes with no choice made for president) and overvotes (votes made with more than one choice marked). Their goal was to determine the reliability and accuracy of the systems used for the voting process. The NORC concluded that if the disputes over the validity of all the ballots statewide in question had been consistently resolved and any uniform standard applied, the electoral result would have been reversed and Gore would have won by 107–115 votes if only two of the three coders had to agree on the ballot. When counting ballots wherein all three coders agreed, Gore would have won the most restrictive scenario by 127 votes and Bush would have won the most inclusive scenario by 110 votes. Inclusive in media reporting likely refers to including the undervotes (only) as these people were then included in the vote. Whether overvotes were truly nullified in counts is not known.[73]
Subsequent analyses cast further doubt on conclusions that Bush would have likely won had the U.S. Supreme Court not intervened. An analysis of the NORC data by University of Pennsylvania researcher Steven F. Freeman and journalist Joel Bleifuss concluded that a recount of all uncounted votes using any standard (inclusive, strict, statewide or county by county), Gore would have been the victor.[74] Such a statewide review including all uncounted votes was a very real possibility, as Leon County Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis, whom the Florida Supreme Court had assigned to oversee the statewide recount, had scheduled a hearing for December 13 (mooted by the U.S. Supreme Court's final ruling on the 12th) to consider the question of including overvotes as well as undervotes. Subsequent statements by Judge Lewis and internal court documents support the likelihood of including overvotes in the recount.[75] Florida State University professor of public policy Lance deHaven-Smith observed that, even considering only undervotes, "under any of the five most reasonable interpretations of the Florida Supreme Court ruling, Gore does, in fact, more than make up the deficit".[76] Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's analysis of the NORC study and media coverage of it supports these interpretations and criticizes the coverage of the study by media outlets such as the New York Times and the other media consortium members.[71]
Further, according to sociologists Christopher Uggen and Jeff Manza, the 2000 election may have gone to Al Gore if the disenfranchised population of Florida had voted. Florida law disenfranchises convicted felons, requiring individual applications to regain suffrage. In their 2002 American Sociological Review article, Uggen and Manza found that the released felon vote could have altered the outcome of seven senatorial races between 1978 and 2000, and the 2000 presidential election.[77] Matt Ford noted their study concluded "if the state's 827,000 disenfranchised felons had voted at the same rate as other Floridians, Democratic candidate Al Gore would have won Florida—and the presidency—by more than 80,000 votes."[78] The effect of Florida's law is such that in 2014 "[m]ore than one in ten Floridians – and nearly one in four African-American Floridians – are shut out of the polls because of felony convictions."[79]
Voting machines[edit]
Because the 2000 presidential election was so close in Florida, the United States government and state governments pushed for election reform to be prepared by the 2004 presidential election. Many of Florida's year 2000 election night problems stemmed from usability and ballot design factors with voting systems, including the potentially confusing "butterfly ballot". Many voters had difficulties with the paper-based punch card voting machines and were either unable to understand the required process for voting or unable to perform the process. This resulted in an unusual amount of overvote (voting for more candidates than is allowed) and undervotes (voting for fewer than the minimum candidates, including none at all). Many undervotes were potentially caused by either voter error or errors with the punch card paper ballots resulting in hanging, dimpled, or pregnant chad.
A proposed solution to these problems was the installation of modern electronic voting machines. The United States presidential election of 2000 spurred the debate about election and voting reform, but it did not end it.
In the aftermath of the election, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was passed to help states upgrade their election technology in the hopes of preventing similar problems in future elections. Unfortunately, the electronic voting systems that many states purchased to comply with HAVA actually caused problems in the presidential election of 2004.[80]
Exit polling and declaration of vote winners[edit]
The Voter News Service's reputation was damaged by its treatment of Florida's presidential vote in 2000. Breaking its own guidelines, VNS called the state as a win for Gore 12 minutes before polls closed in the Florida panhandle. Although most of the state is in the Eastern Time Zone, counties in the Florida panhandle, located in the Central Time Zone, had not yet closed their polls. Inconsistent polling results caused the VNS to change its call twice, first from Gore to Bush and then to "too close to call". Due in part to this (and other polling inaccuracies) the VNS was disbanded in 2003.
Likewise, there were discrepancies between the results of the exit polls and the actual outcomes. According to Bush adviser Karl Rove, exit polls early in the afternoon on Election Day showed Gore winning by three percentage points, but when the networks called the state for Gore, Bush led by about 75,000 votes in raw tallies from the Florida Secretary of State.
Also, charges of media bias were levied against the networks by Republicans. They claimed that the networks called states more quickly for Al Gore than for George W. Bush. Congress held hearings on this matter and the networks claimed to have no intentional bias in their election night reporting. However, a study of the calls made on election night 2000 indicated that states carried by Gore were called more quickly than states won by Bush; however, notable Bush states, like New Hampshire and Florida, were very close, and close Gore states like Iowa, Oregon, New Mexico and Wisconsin were called late as well.[81]
The early call of Florida for Gore has been alleged to have cost Bush several close states, including Iowa, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wisconsin. In each of these states, Gore won by less than 10,000 votes, and the polls closed after the networks called Florida for Gore. Because the Florida call was widely seen as an indicator that Gore had won the election, it is possible that it depressed Republican turnout in these states during the final hours of voting, giving Gore the slim margin by which he carried each of them. Had Bush carried all four of these states, he would have been able to win the electoral vote, even with a loss in Florida. Likewise, the call may have affected the outcome of the Senate election in Washington state, where incumbent Republican Slade Gorton was defeated by approximately 2,000 votes statewide.
Ralph Nader spoiler effect[edit]
Many Democrats blamed Gore's loss on third-party candidate Ralph Nader, claiming he acted as a spoiler, taking votes from Gore that cost him the election. Nader received 97,000 votes in Florida (by comparison, there were 111,251 overvotes).[82] Additionally, Nader received 22,000 votes in New Hampshire, where Bush beat Gore by 7,000 votes. Winning either state would have won the general election for Gore. Gore also lost his home state of Tennessee which would have given Gore more Electoral College votes as well. Defenders of Nader, including Dan Perkins, argued that the margin in Florida was small enough that Democrats could blame any number of third-party candidates for the defeat, including Workers World Party candidate Monica Moorehead, who received 1,500 votes.[83] But the controversy with Nader also drained energy from the Democratic party as divisive debate went on in the months leading up to the election.
Nader's reputation was hurt by this perception, which may have hindered his goals as an activist. For example, Mother Jones wrote, "For evidence of how rank-and-file liberals have turned against Nader, one need look no further than the empire he created. Public Citizen, the organization (Nader) founded in 1971, has a new fundraising problem—its founder. After the election, contributions dropped... When people inquire about Nader's relationship to the organization, Public Citizen sends out a letter that begins with a startling new disclaimer: 'Although Ralph Nader was our founder, he has not held an official position in the organization since 1980 and does not serve on the board. Public Citizen—and the other groups that Mr. Nader founded—act independently.' "[84]
Democratic party strategist and Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) chair Al From expressed a different view. In the January 24, 2001, issue[85] of the DLC's Blueprint magazine,[86] he wrote, "I think they're wrong on all counts. The assertion that Nader's marginal vote hurt Gore is not borne out by polling data. When exit pollers asked voters how they would have voted in a two-way race, Bush actually won by a point. That was better than he did with Nader in the race."
Further consequences[edit]
The election itself was highly consequential for both United States domestic policy, and foreign affairs. In the months following the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in Manhattan, New York, the George W. Bush administration would enact measures such as the Patriot Act and start the process of creating a new federal agency: the Department of Homeland Security. It would also take steps to link the regime of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks, substantiating the threat with claims (of dubious truth) that Hussein was building and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and that he had ties to al-Qaeda. Under the direction of President Bush, an America-led military coalition would commence Operation Iraqi Freedom on March 19, 2003. After Hussein's regime was toppled, President Bush declared "major combat operations in Iraq have ended" on May 1, 2003. However, the ensuing insurgency against Coalition Forces and the sectarian violence between Iraqi Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites would carry on for another eight and half years, followed by a renewed civil war over 10 years after the original invasion of Iraq, involving the still weakened Iraqi state and the new threat of ISIL.
Press influence on race[edit]
In their 2007 book The Nightly News Nightmare: Network Television's Coverage of US Presidential Elections, 1988-2004, professors Stephen J. Farnsworth and S. Robert Lichter alleged most media outlets influenced the outcome of the election through the use of horse race journalism.[87] Some liberal supporters of Al Gore argued that the media had a bias against Gore and in favor of Bush. Peter Hart and Jim Naureckas, two commentators for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), called the media "serial exaggerators" and alleged that several media outlets were constantly exaggerating criticism of Gore:[88] they alleged that the media falsely claimed Gore lied when he claimed he spoke in an overcrowded science class in Sarasota, Florida,[88] and also alleged the media supposedly gave Bush a pass on certain issues, such as the fact that Bush allegedly exaggerated how much money he signed into the annual Texas state budget to help the uninsured during his second debate with Gore in October 2000.[88] In the April 2000 issue of Washington Monthly, columnist Robert Parry also alleged that media outlets exaggerated Gore's supposed claim that he "discovered" the Love Canal neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York during a campaign speech in Concord, New Hampshire on November 30, 1999,[89] when he had only claimed he "found" it after it was already evacuated in 1978 because of chemical contamination.[89] Rolling Stone columnist Eric Boehlert also alleged that media outlets exaggerated criticism of Gore as early as July 22, 1999,[90] when Gore, known for being an environmentalist, had a friend release 500 million gallons of water into a drought stricken river to help keep his boat afloat for a photo shoot;[90] media outlets, Boehlert claimed, exaggerated the actual number of gallons that were released and claimed it was 4 billion.[
