This may be too old of a topic to put here now, but there have been a few elusions in this forum about the 2000 election, so I thought I would repost my essay here.

Among many contested points among political pundits, the presidential election of 2000 is probably among the most controversial. On the Democrat and generally liberal side there are those who accuse President Bush of stealing the election and, they also accuse the U.S. Supreme Court of appointing America’s president. This, they say, is evidence of the erosion of democracy. On the opposing Republican and generally conservative side, arguments are made that Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore attempted to steal the election and that democracy was narrowly saved by legitimate legal actions. Reasons cited by both sides are the narrow margins of victory in certain counties in Florida, the series of recounts in Florida, the role of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, and the recounting methods used in Florida with the order of the U.S. Supreme Court on December 12, 2000. So many opinions muddy the waters that it is difficult to form a truly objective opinion. However, with some research it is possible to reach a conclusion of what really happened.

First to be examined is where the entire debacle began, the narrow victory in Florida. Al Gore and his legal team, along with the news media, centered their focus on three predominately Democratic counties; Palm Beach County, Broward County, and Volusia County. It should be understood that there is nothing inherently wrong with Al Gore investigating the possibilities that he could have won these counties, and therefore Florida. The results were close enough that a careful recount could change the victor from Bush to Gore. So, upon learning of how close the election was, Al Gore’s legal team demanded a recount of the previously mentioned counties. A problem of this recount lies in the Democrats’ double standards. While demanding a recount in these predominately Democratic counties, they in turn demanded that 25,000 absentee votes be thrown out in the predominately Republican counties of Seminole and Martin. There was nothing illegal about the absentee ballots, which the Florida Supreme Court conceded in decision No. SC00-2447, on December 12, 2000. Despite this fact, Democrats and Al Gore insisted that these military ballots should not be counted. In effect what this means is that Al Gore wished to allow ballots in Democratic counties that even they could not decide the legality of, which will be discussed in more detail later, and yet at the same time wished to discount 25,000 valid ballots that were legally countable. But this does not change the issue of the voting count in Palm Beach, Broward, and Volusia counties. What it does is begin to show the intentions of Al Gore and his lawyers, and moves the dispute to further issues.

At the obvious front-and-center of the news media reporting were the actual recounts in those three disputed counties. Results of the recounts were announced at least three times. The first was on November 10, which showed Bush’s margin of victory at 327 votes. Five days later on November 15 the AP estimated Bush to lead by a margin of merely 286 votes. The third announcement on November 18 included the absentee ballots that Democrats contested, and gave Bush a larger margin of 930 votes. Finally, the certified result on November 26 gave Bush the victory with 537 votes, a margin of just .01% of Florida’s votes. Additionally as historical evidence, the one-year cooperative study done by the National Opinion Research Center with eight news media companies showed that Bush still would have won if Florida’s recount had been allowed to continue. The recounts show conclusively that Bush did in fact win the presidential election legitimately. However they do not solve the possibly larger issues that sprouted as a result of the entire contest, so the search for answers must continue.

Among the people involved in the issue Katherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State, cannot be ignored. Democrats expected her to extend the certification date in order to include recount results. The Florida statutes state that returns must be filed by 5 p.m. on the 7th day following the general election, which in this case was November 14. However, on November 14 Katherine Harris went ahead and postponed certification to allow Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Broward counties time to prepare an explanation of why they should hand count their ballots. The next day Harris announced the counties did not offer adequate evidence to support further hand recounts. It appears that this thoroughly angered the press and the Democrats. Within hours every news outlet ran stories of Harris’ political bias, and went on to claim that her refusal to postpone certification was directly related to her affiliation with the Republican Party. Katherine Harris pointed out that every decision she made was based entirely on Florida law, and that if certification was to be postponed it would have to be the decision of the courts or of the Florida legislature. As so often happens, liberal Democrats could only find evidence that Harris was correct. That is when the vilifying attacks started. Typical of liberals, rather than debate more on the issue at hand, stories on all the major networks and news outlets criticized Katherine Harris for her looks, her makeup, and her Republican Party membership. Also on November 15, the Florida Supreme Court denied Harris’ request for the hand recounts to stop, effectively halting certification. What the media and Democrats did to Katherine Harris’ reputation was purposely designed to discredit every influence her position afforded. This belies the true nature of liberal political fighting, and further belies the true nature of Gore’s contentions regarding the voting in general. More specifically it shows that the Democrats were more interested in winning than abiding with the established Florida laws. Katherine Harris only did her job as it is described in Florida law.

All of the above points address some major issues concerning the presidential election of 2000, but the most important issue is the legality of the recounting processes themselves. “Processes” instead of “process” because the canvassing boards constantly changed how they counted the disputed ballots. This was not a disparity between counties, which would probably have been legal, but was instead disparities of method within the counties themselves. The confusion lay with a lack of definition for what a “dimpled ballot” was. Decisions in each county kept changing from two-sided hanging chads, to chads allowing a pinhole of light through, to pregnant chads, and back through the choices again. It must be noted that Democrats controlled the canvassing boards of these counties. With the constantly changing allowance of what could be counted, and the political bias of the counting canvassing boards, it appears that the changing counting methods could have been a result of the Democrats desperately trying to force a win for Al Gore.

The crises reached the U.S. Supreme Court again on December 12. Previously the High Court had been asked to intervene, but had remanded the issue back to the Florida Supreme Court. The Florida Supreme Court had set a recounting and certification deadline of December 12, so the issue coming up to the U.S. Supreme Court put a serious impetus on the Court. Opponents of Bush now contend that the decision made by this court effectively appointed Bush to the presidency. This contention completely ignores the law of the land and of Florida. In Bush vs. Gore, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote, ”The question before us, however, is whether the recount procedures the Florida Supreme Court has adopted are consistent with its obligation to avoid arbitrary and disparate treatment of the members of its electorate.” In other words, this was about equal protection clauses in the voting rights granted by the Florida Legislature to Florida’s populace. All votes must be treated equally. Quoting further from Bush vs. Gore, “Florida’s basic command for the count of legally cast votes is to consider the ‘intent of the voter.” Gore vs. Harris__So. 2d at___(slip op., at 39)…The problem inheres in the absence of specific standards to ensure its equal application. The formulation of uniform rules to determine intent based on these recurring circumstances is practicable and, we conclude, necessary.” The High Court went on to order the Florida Supreme Court to decide on a uniform counting standard before recounting could be done. Since the deadline was only hours away, there was not enough time for standards to be adopted and counting to be done.

This does not effectively equal a court appointed president. Had the counties and the Florida Supreme Court used uniform counting practices, it can be deduced from the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that the recounts would have been allowed. In true actuality, the three or four Democratic counties and the Florida Supreme Court had predisposed the ruling by their very own actions.

In their rush to steal the election from the American people and give it to Al Gore, Democrats did not stop to consider the portent of what they were doing. As evidenced by the double-standards Democrats used in determining what votes they wanted to be legal, the continued recounts they lost, the illegality of continuously changing counting standards, and the study done by a media group that announced Bush as the winner, the Democrats were barely stopped in their theft by their own incompetence. As mentioned before, had they adopted uniform counting standards the recounting would have continued. The Supreme Court of the United States actually saved our democratic process, keeping it intact despite efforts of liberal Democrats to illegally gain the presidency.