The 21st Century Elections

It doesn’t take a political expert to see that the 2000 presidential election between Bush and Gore was extremely illegitimate. This can be observed through the recount incident which took place in the state of Florida. Many people, especially seniors, felt that they had not voted for the right candidate, which was due to a confusing ballot setup. The ballots were called “butterfly ballots”. These ballots, as one could imagine, had candidates on either side which the voter could choose from. Seems simple enough, right? Unfortunately, that was not the case. The font on the ballots were extremely minuscule, as well as condensed. To add to that, the voter had to use a pin to make a puncture next to their selection. Some people, who were either

The equal protection clause of the Constitution provided George W. Bush with a historical argument that surprisingly fit his case. Not every Floridians ballot was provided with the same protections. There was no statewide vote recount procedure, every county had their own provisions.Two voters could have marked their ballots in an identical manner, but the ballot in one county would be counted while the ballot in a different county would be rejected, due to the conflicting manual recount

The 2000 President Election isn’t considered to be the typical election that occurs every four years in our society. I am opening up the discussion of this important topic in American presidential history by first sharing a fact that not many people may know: there have been three previous presidential elections in which one candidate won the popular vote but not the electoral vote and lost the election. The 2000 Presidential Election was considered to be one of the most highly contested elections in presidential election history (Summary). The election was between Governor George W. Bush (R-TX) and Vice President Al Gore (D-TN). On Election Day night, news stations across the country were all giving an early win of Florida to Gore and

The election of 2000 was legitimate and I think George W. Bush won that election fair and square. He won the election because all the votes that were recounted were still in his favor and the votes were greater than Al Gore’s votes.For example, according to the legislature of Florida ninety-nine percent of the ballots were recounted and the votes ended up being higher than the recounted votes for Al Gore.In addition, Bush won the electoral college vote even with the recount which proves that this election was legitimate. Another reason why I think that Bush won this election was because some democratic voters did not correctly fill in their vote or they changed their vote before turning in the ballot.The issue of Palm Beach County in Florida,

People went to bed one night thinking that Gore had won, but when they woke up they found out that bush had won with Florida’s twenty-five electoral votes. It happened on November 7, 2000. Bush charged that the recounts in Florida broke the rules of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. A 7-2 majority ruled that the Florida recount was being conducted unconstitutionally. The case was covered in controversy as the Majority versus minority opinion on the redress was split along the lines of the more reactionary justices voting in favor of Bush and the more liberal justices voting in favor of Gore. The minority disunity noted these issues and other including the principle of equality and

Florida has been being a large impact on the outcome of presidential campaigns in past elections. One of these years in history was 1876 between Democrat Samuel J. Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. During this election, Tilden and the Democrats were accused of winning southern states through violence and fraud causing Republicans to demand vote recounts. After recounts, Republicans were accused of throwing out Democratic votes so Hayes would gain support from states that were once Tilden 's (Morris 2003). For this election, Florida played a key role along with a few other states because of the electoral votes that were key in determining who would win this entire presidential election for that year.

One of the controversial elements to the election was the vote count in the state of Florida. Florida was a state, at the time, was that presidential candidate George W. Bush's brother, Jeb, was the governor. Opponents of Bush contended that suspicious activity regarding the security of votes as well as the accuracy of the votes counted was highly questionable. Ultimately, the outcome of the election came down to the recount

As in the past, the media was covering the all important election. They had always relied on exit polls as the polls closed across the nation. In reality, the Florida results were just too close to call. Nevertheless, that did not stop the media from doing so. Not once, but twice, major news media outlets were erroneous in their report. Around 8pm, it was declared that Al Gore was the projected winner of the electoral votes in the state of Florida. However, a couple of hours later, the projection was retracted and restated as Florida as being too close to call. Then, just after 2am on November 8, the mistake was made for a second time. The major networks declared George W. as the winner. This even led to Al Gore calling the Governor to concede. However, as Gore prepared to address his supporters in Nashville, Tennessee, he was alert to the shrinking numbers in Bush¡¦s lead. The final total was now less than one half of a percent lead in favor of Bush. That immediately calls for a recount of votes under state law. Subsequently, Gore called Bush and retracted his concession. It wasn¡¦t over yet! One thing was, Al Gore had prevailed in the popular vote but without Florida¡¦s tally, the electoral vote was up in the air. The election wasn¡¦t over and the recounts began.

The 2000 presidential election was a major eye opener for many people. As it appeared to also be the dismay of many, the candidate who won the most popular votes nationwide actually lost the contest. In the election's risen moment, popular attention centered around the Electoral College and its role in the presidential election. Under the U.S. Constitution, the people did not necessarily direct vote for the President in a nationwide election; rather, the people in each state would vote for electors from that state, who in turn would cast the constitutionally decisive votes for President and Vice President. Moreover, not only is the people's influence indirect, the Electoral College's voting pattern does not necessarily track the national popular

The night of the election it seemed as if the Vice President and candidate for the Democratic Party was poised for a close victor. As the polls closed along the eastern seaboard, exit polling information indicated a clear, but narrow lead for the Vice President as he still need to secure Florida and two states totaling 15 electoral votes or more to win the Presidency (Toobin, 18). At 7:49 EST, NBC called Florida and the election for Gore, and so did 2 of the 4 major television networks did the same in the following minutes. As the night continued Gore secured Minnesota and New Mexico, but confusion in exit polling data had led to a premature call for Gore (18, Toobin). As the red eye hours of the morning continued all four media outlets reported a flood of data from Volusia County, Daytona Beach put Bush up by more than 50,000 votes, thus the media outlets followed suit and eventually called Florida for Bush. Although a questionable disappearance of

The African American population in the United States overwhelmingly leans toward more Liberal candidates. Since Gore was behind by 16,000 votes, this could have drastically changed the election. Also, there was 175,000 uncounted ballots. This was due to some citizens having difficulty with fully punching through ballots. This was a contentious debate across the entire state and across party lines. Also, thousands of senior citizens accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore due to the confusing structure of the official ballots. After various recounts, Al Gore was down by 98 votes. During this time, the Supreme Court issued a stay and halted all recounts. Justices like Antonin Scalia claimed “irreparable harm” if the remaining votes were counted. The Democrats felt like Anthony Kennedy was their last chance of swinging the SCOTUS in their direction. Ultimately, the Court ruled in Bush’s

This lead to the exclusion of several thousands of votes that could have potentially won Gore the election, and their exclusion was enough to grant some semblance of moral high ground against the Republican opposition. The Democrats made the claim that they should have been allowed to vote under florida law, but any attempts to allow them their vote proved fruitless. After extensive decrying of the Republican party, the Democrats were soon found to be the target of several improper allegations themselves. A number of “Overvotes” had been detected on several ballots of other counties, and this lead the Republicans to accuse the Democrats of voter fraud and the inclusion of illegal votes. The continuous stream of slander from both sides dragged on ad nauseum, interrupted only by a series of supreme court decisions presumably brought about by the influence the Republican party has on them. Everything from attempts to exclude armed service votes to changing the criteria for vote counting were employed, and to great

After everything was said and done the decisions by the courts were all legitimate, however, the counting of votes and the numbers that came out of them may have not been legitimate. For instance some counties would count the dimples in the voting ballots while others weren’t. Then there was Katherine Harris, all of her decisions were controversial and there wasn’t a single one that the people could be satisfied with. The results of some her choices were : direct insults to her, the delay of the election, and vote count loss. Others were going on saying that Bush was selected by Harris herself and he wasn’t fairly elected, this is based off of the choices she decided upon making. Some of those impactful choices would be her not extending the recount deadlines, the attempt to throw out overseas ballots that hadn’t arrived by the deadline, ordered the following counties to stop recounting :Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach. Now along with some of that information lies the fact that the election process wasn’t fully developed and thought through for a situation of this sort.

The election of 2000 between Al Gore and George W. Bush was illegitimate. Although presidential elections are to be held at a very high standard, this election was based solely on cheating the system. Both the Republican and Democratic parties schemed rather than actually campaigning when circumstances became difficult. A major reason as to why the election was illegitimate was that felons and those that had names similar to felons, were not allowed to vote. 20,000 people were disqualified from voting and only 33 were actual felons. Another reason was because they recounted dimpled chads, even though dimpled chads are not supposed to count. Although the dimpled chads cost Gore 6,000 votes, they should not have been counted. Also, 3,000 votes

A Bush vs. Gore election, a completely unfair and illegitimate political race. Fighting for the final battle in Florida, winner claim to be the next president of the United States. With Bush’s brother to be the governor, every news station and political of Florida Palm Beach County, in Florida, home to many older and possibly more senile people. When voting for the next President, many people have believed to have incorrectly voted and claimed to have voted for someone they didn’t choose to. Gore lost the machine count, however many people were demanding a re-vote since they feel as if their votes were not properly filled out and/ or counted for the wrong candidate. Bush was leading by 15,000, however there was multiple mix ups with the numbers