Real Crime Stories/Paranormal Hauntings/Conspiracy Theories Book II

The Recount of Election 2000

The Florida election recount of 2000was a period of vote recounting in Florida that occurred during theweeks after Election Day in the 2000 United States presidentialelection between George W. Bush and Al Gore. The Florida vote wasultimately settled in Bush's favor by a margin of 537 votes when theU.S. Supreme Court, in Bush v. Gore, stopped a recount that had beeninitiated upon a ruling by the Florida Supreme Court.

Bush's win in Florida gave him amajority of votes in the Electoral College and victory in thepresidential election.

Background

The controversy began on electionnight, November 7, 2000, when the national television networks, usinginformation provided to them by the Voter News Service, anorganization formed by the Associated Press to help determine theoutcome of the election through early result tallies and exitpolling, first called Florida for Gore in the hour after polls closedin the peninsula (in the Eastern time zone) but about ten minutesbefore they closed in the heavily Republican counties of thepanhandle (in the Central time zone). Later in the evening, thenetworks reversed their call, moving to "too close to call",then later giving it to Bush;then they retracted that call as well, finally indicating the statewas "too close to call". Gore phoned Bushthe night of the election to concede, then retracted his concessionafter learning how close the Florida count was.

Bush led the election-night vote countin Florida by 1,784 votes. The small margin produced an automaticrecount under Florida state law, which began the day after theelection. That first day's results reduced the margin to just over900 votes. Once it became clear that Florida would decide thepresidential election, the nation's attention focused on the manualrecount.

Recount

The Florida election was closelyscrutinized after Election Day. Due to the narrow margin of theoriginal vote count, Florida Election Code 102.141 mandated astatewide machine recount, which began the day after the election. Itwas ostensibly completed on November 10 in the 66 Florida countiesthat used vote-counting machines and reduced Bush's lead to 327votes. According to legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, later analysisshowed that a total of 18 counties—accounting for a quarter of allvotes cast in Florida—did not carry out the legally mandatedmachine recount, but "No one from the Gore campaign everchallenged this view" that the machine recount had beencompleted.

Once the closeness of the election inFlorida was clear, both the Bush and Gore campaigns organizedthemselves for the ensuing legal process. On November 9, the Bushcampaign announced they had hired George H. W. Bush's formerSecretary of State James Baker and Republican political consultantRoger Stone to oversee their legal team, and the Gore campaign hiredBill Clinton's former Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

Following the machine recount, the Gorecampaign requested a manual recount in four counties. Florida statelaw at the time allowed a candidate to request a manual recount byprotesting the results of at least three precincts. The countycanvassing board was then to decide whether to do a recount, as wellas the method of the recount, in those three precincts. If the boarddiscovered an error that in its judgment could affect the outcome ofthe election, they were then authorized to do a full recount of theballots. This statutory process primarily accommodated recounts forlocal elections. The Gore campaign requested that disputed ballots inMiami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Volusia Counties be counted byhand. Volusia County started its recount on November 12. Floridastatutes also required that all counties certify and report theirreturns, including any recounts, by 5:00 p.m. on November 14. Themanual recounts were time-consuming, and it soon became clear thatsome counties would not complete their recounts before the deadline.On November 13 the Gore campaign and Volusia and Palm Beach Countiessued to have the deadlines extended.