From jan 2001 until jan 2009 , George W. Bush was the 43rd President of the United States. And during the past eight years George W. Bush has been involved in many controversies. They even started before he became president. It was well known that the 2000 election would be close, and indeed it did.
In the 2000 presidential elections Republican George W. Bush ran against Democrat Al Gore.
Election day came and went, and Bush won twenty-eight states, but not enough to win. It all came down to the state of Florida, who ever won Florida would win the 2000 election. First the TV networks called Florida for Gore, but not long after they took it back saying its to close to call. Then most TV networks called Florida for Bush (following Fox News that was the first to call Florida for Bush), and Gore was on his way to give his give his concession speech. But when Gores people had a second look at the number they found out that the networks had the wrong numbers. Gores people stooped him just in time. If Gore had given that speech the race would have been over, but it dragged out into a bitter recount.
The election night vote count gave Bush a little over 2000 more votes than Gore, just over 2000 votes. Due to the small margins Florida law provided for an automatic recount, witch turned out to be far more difficult than many did imagine. The final official Florida recount gave Bush the victory by only 537 votes. That makes a difference of just 0.061 %, as both nearly got 3 mill votes.
But getting the votes counted again was not easy. There were many different counting standards, and recounts take time. When the people counting saw that they could not finish before the deadline they asked for more time but were denied, so the sued to have the deadlines extended. So now it was all up to the courts.
The Democrats took their case to the Florida supreme court, and the Republicans took their case up with the Supreme Court of the United States. The Florida court, by a 4 to 3 vote ordered a manual recount. Then the next day the Supreme court stopped the incomplete recount, at that time Bush was leading with only 154 votes.
A few days later the Supreme court came out with their ruling, that went in favor of Bush. By a 7-2 vote they voted that the Florida Supreme Courts scheme for recounting ballots was unconstitutional, as well as a 5-4 United States Court decision that ended the Florida recounts and allowed Florida to certify its votes. Effectively ending the legal review of the vote count with Bush in lead. In other words the Supreme Court stops the recount causing them to miss the deadline, then Supreme Court says as the recount cant start up again because they missed the deadline.
The Courts 5-4 decision became very controversial as it said its ruling is“limited to the present circumstances”. It said that Bush vs. Gore only counts once, and never again. Thats the only time the Supreme Court has ever done that.
Controversial issues in Florida:
- The governor in Florida in 2000 was no other than Jeb Bush the brother of George W. Bush.
- The Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris was the person in charge of state election procedures, but she was also a Bush state campaign cochairman.
- A number of overseas ballots were missing postmarks or witness signature, so they were invalid under Florida law. But were still counted.
- In Florida convicted felons cant vote, so they are put into the “scrub list”. So before the election Katherine Harris contracted DBT Online Inc. to update the list. 96000 citizens were listed in 2000, most of them African-American. But the list was full of mistakes: Many people who have similar names to felons were put on the list,and some felonies were dated in the future. DBT were directed not to cross-check the list. So many people that have never committed a crime in their life were told that they could not vote. This took away mostly Democrats votes as most African-Americans votes Democrat, as the list was largely of African-Americans.
- The Volusia error. In Volusia`s 216th precinct of only 585 registered voters, a voting machine went crazy. The machine gave Bush 2813 votes, and gave Gore negative -16022 votes. Fortunately this error was caught and corrected on election night.
- Palm Beach County`s butterfly ballots. To make it easier for people with bad eyesight there were names on the ballot were made larger. But to fit all names on one ballot, the names were put on both sides. This caused some problems. If the ballot was not put in properly it was hard to see where to punch the hole. Plus it made in easy to vote for someone else. Many people said that they thought that they voted for Bushanan instead of Gore. Even Buchanan said: “When I took a look at the ballot on Election night … its very easy for me to see how someone could have voted for me in the belief they voted for Al Gore.”
- Many poor county`s didnt have the money to clean the ballot machine, so when people tried to vote they could not punch the ballot.
And thats just the short version. Last year there was a film made about the recount in Florida, called Recount.
Here is the trailer for film Recount, and I strongly recommend it:
So did Bush really win?
