Essay by:
Idil BAYSAL, Intern, Lightmillennium.org

The 2000 Election was a flashpoint in American history that tested the legitimacy of our Nation’s “so-called” Democratic system. It not only raised suspicions about how honorably our governmental processes serve its people, but also was rendered controversial by its outcome (Gore won the popular vote and lost the election while Bush won in the Electoral College,) and the manner in which the press covered it. Vice President Al Gore and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman headed the Democratic ticket, while Texas Governor George Bush and former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney represented the Republicans. Both candidates had much to offer when it came to easing the problems that overwhelmed the country. With respect to health care, Bush promised he would fortify Medicare with privatized sector substitutes, while Gore promised that 1/6 of his budget’s excess over a 15-year period would strengthen this entitlement. In reference to Social Security, Bush proposed to set up individual retirement accounts, and Gore planned to provide parents raising children social security credit. Though both candidates had specific proposals, the controversy behind the election lay in how these candidates should be elected in order to take over the helm of the nation, and to implement their visions of leadership. Florida became a battlefield for the two rivals, as skepticism and outrage spread throughout the nation over the issue of who actually had won.

The long-awaited Election Day arrived on Tuesday, November 7th. At 7pm on election night, the media anxiously waited for the polls to close, and the press asserted that it would not declare election results until a count of each state was completed. However, because a strip of Florida’s western territory is located in the central time zone, certain polls were still open when they were supposed to close elsewhere in the nation. As November 7th came to an end, Gore maintained a lead in exit polls, but George Bush appeared to be the leader when it came to the verified results. Before midnight, a majority of the networks removed Florida from the states that Al Gore had won, and placed it on a closely contested list. Although the winner of the popular vote remained undecided, Gore, exhausted from a tough battle, was ready to hand over victory to Bush. Minutes before his concession speech, Gore’s advisors informed him that Bush’s lead had declined to 200 votes. Gore had already placed a call to congratulate Bush on his win, but narrowing numbers in Florida prompted him to call again and retract his surrender. Since Florida statute calls for a mandatory recount when results are so close, Gore declined to concede. The arduous task of recounting the Florida vote began, and the election took a turn for the worse.

In the 2000 Election, politicians focused more on who would obtain power, rather than the principles of equality and of each citizen’s right to have his or her vote counted equally.

Even prior to the recount, a controversy arose when Florida citizens, who had gone to the polls to vote, found that their names were not on the local ballot lists. In the 2000 Election, 60% more African Americans voted compared to the previous one, and before the precincts closed, they were told that their names had been excluded from the books at the polling stations. Furious that their votes would not be counted, they turned to the NAACP for help. A few days after the election, the association held a series of hearings and concluded that there had been illegal use made of the “Felon Purge List.” This inventory was based on a state law, which impeded former felons from exercising the franchise. This long forgotten law was incorporated into Florida’s state constitution by a group of Southern soldiers who wanted to prevent blacks from voting and it had not attracted much attention until 1998, when Katherine Harris, the former Secretary of State of Florida, demanded an electronic record of all the ex-offenders in the state. What Harris was doing could be considered “constitutional” to an extent, but questions continued to arise when arbitrary names began appearing on the list. In the 2000 Election, politicians focused more on who would obtain power, rather than the principles of equality and of each citizen’s right to have his or her vote counted equally.

And as these problems continued to grow, the role of the media, in its coverage of the election, proved to be equally alarming. CBS anchor and managing editor, Dan Rather stated, "We have tended, and I include myself in this criticism...to cover the courts and rely on the attorneys to explain the system and the process. But we have not done the hard digging on questions such as, 'Was there or was there not a deliberate effort to suppress black votes in Florida?' Not enough digging on, 'Can the machines or can they not be fairly easily finagled in favor of one candidate?'" These rising inquiries proved the media’s awareness of the situation yet acknowledged that there had been little effort put in into altering the outcome to be truly representative of the votes that were cast.

The felon-purge lists were created by Data Base Technologies to see how many people met the “criteria” for possible ex-felon matches. More than half the names were of African Americans, and because 90% of them vote for Democratic Party candidates, Katherine Harris discarded vast numbers of people from the electoral directories. The Republican legislature informed Data Base Technologies to disregard middle initials, dates of birth, whether the “ex-felon” was a junior or senior, and told them to only use the first four letters of a person’s first name when deciding to include people in this inventory. Clerks who checked soon began to realize that names checked in the lists were those of people who had never committed a crime. Babies’ names were identified as those of criminals and might some day be prevented from voting in the future. Wrongfully charged adult citizens were trapped in a situation where they were forced to prove themselves legitimate voters before their vote could count. When an interviewer questioned Clayton Roberts, the Director of the Division of Elections, he irritably replied, “We have a statute that we have to have a private company to do this, we put it out for the bid, they get the bid, and I think I’m done with this interview!” Roberts’ anxious behavior not only exposed his personal involvement in these illegal events, but also opened up a larger controversy, which could not be solved.

Then, “ex-offenders from other states, who had their voting rights restored, were also purged from the lists. When the County Election Supervisors asked the Governor’s office, “We’re not supposed to purge these people, are we?” they received a letter from Jeb Bush’s office stating, “If there is someone from another state who comes into Florida with their civil rights, but may have had a record, they may have to ask Jeb Bush for permission to vote.” Eventually, however, the Florida Supreme Court deemed this act to be unconstitutional; the Republicans could not hold people responsible for asking Jeb Bush to grant them their constitutional right to vote if their rights had already been restored. Not to be forgotten either, is the fact that we had a Florida governor whose brother was a candidate for a Presidency that was by now hotly contested. In addition to Jeb’s management of the State of Florida, George Bush’s first cousin, John Ellis, was the head of FOX News’ networks decisions desk, and was accused of directing the FOX network to state that Bush had already won the election so that people would stop voting for Gore. Questions remained as to whether Jeb and Ellis acted prejudicially in behalf of George Bush’s election.

A day after the election, Al Gore had captured 48,809,906 of the popular vote, while Bush waged a neck-to-neck battle with 48,549,563 votes. Gore’s lead in the popular vote proved to be useless, since it would be Florida that decided who the next President of the United States would be. Out of some 6,137,938 counted votes, Bush was only ahead by some 1784 votes. State law demanded a machine recount if the difference between the votes each candidate received was less than 0.5%. A recount process of this nature had never before come to pass and proved to be an extraordinary event in political history. Though most counties retained their original records, the first numbers of the recount began shifting to the Democrats’ side. Once the count came to a halt, it was discovered that nearly one thousand votes had not been tallied. With 357 ballots of difference between the candidates, these overlooked votes were vital in determining the outcome of the election.

As the election supervisors commenced reading these uncounted votes, they realized that many of them were illegible and could not be read by the machines. Republicans did not believe that any of the illegible votes should be counted, and though both parties wanted a recount of all ballots cast in Florida, neither could agree on what constituted an invalid ballot. One type of dysfunctional ballot was the butterfly ballot. Instead of an arrow pointing to one slot for each candidate, the butterfly’s layout was designed so that the arrow pointed to a spot in the middle of two candidates’ names (in this case, both Bush and Gore’s.) People were voting for Bush without knowing it! Chads were also highly disputed in counties where Florida voters were put on votomatic (punched) ballots. Hanging chads were composed of half-punched votes, where one or more edges remained connected. Then, there were the pregnant chads: where all corners remained intact but a visible indentation appeared. The counties, which showed the most abnormalities, were Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Volusia. Because these counties were mostly Democratic, the votes began moving in Gore’s favor. Outraged, the Republicans claimed there must be something wrong with the recounts, and the judge of Florida’s State Court told Katherine Harris she could reject the Democrats’ plea for an extended deadline for the process to continue. Promptly, Harris made use of this legal empowerment, by stating, “I’ve decided it is my duty, under Florida law, to exercise my discretion in denying these requested amendments.” After her highly partisan leadership in favor of the Republican Party, Harris had once again proved where her loyalties clearly lay.

Upon the denial of their request for an extended deadline for the count, the Democrats turned to the Supreme Court while the Republicans focused on the overseas absentee ballots. Based on Florida law, absentee ballots have to be postmarked or dated by Election Day. While the Democrats fought to exclude the votes that did not follow the format, the Bush administration persisted and gained an official margin of 537 votes. Al Gore’s team conceded votes to the Republicans, but received exhilarating news from the United States Supreme Court: the hand recount deadline was moved ahead to November 26th. The counties of Broward and Volusia showed an increase in votes for Gore, Palm Beach was not able to complete the recounts under the time limit, and Miami-Dade was discontinued after Harris emphatically rejected the recounts. On the evening of November 27th, Al Gore broadcast a speech to clarify his situation. He stated, “Ignoring votes means ignoring democracy itself.” He promised Florida—and the nation, that each and every vote would be counted no matter who won the Presidency.

He was partially vindicated, when the Supreme Court declared that there would be a manual recount of all votes in any Florida county where the recount had not taken place. The count was begun on the morning of December 9th and halted just three hours later. Fed up with the tumult of the Election, four United States Supreme Court Justices insisted, “If you’re really serious about the fact that there is an equal protection violation here, we don’t want that. We want a uniform standard, and then continue the vote for six more days.” It was Justice Stevens who published the most momentous view: “Although we may never know with complete certainty the winner of this year’s Presidential Election, the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.” Stevens’ convictions were proof of the country’s growing ambivalence about its democratic system.

The ultimate ruling came at 10:00pm on the evening of December 12th. By a vote of 7—2, Gore’s chances of becoming America’s President had vanished. The Gore team conferred for the last time to evaluate their alternatives, but the outcome was clear. In his concession speech on the 13th, Gore reminded America of its purpose and what is has always stood for, “I urge all who stood with us to unite behind our next President. This is America. Just as we fight hard when the stakes are high, we close ranks and come together when the contest is done. As for the battle that ends tonight, I do believe that no matter how hard the loss, defeat might serve as well as victory to shape the soul and let the glory out.” The speech touched the hearts of millions across the nation and demonstrated Al Gore’s belief that America would continue to remain a great nation; he simply could not bear to see further division in the country.

Furthermore, Ralph Nader’s involvement in the controversy augmented even more suspicion of how fairly the election had been completed. From the beginning, it was clear that the Green Party was not going to sweep the Presidency and that Nader’s supporters should vote for Gore in order to prevent a victory for Bush. Many prominent liberal politicians, activists, and actors (such as Susan Sarandon) campaigned for Nader. Some, encouraged citizens not to vote for Nader because, as they claimed, “A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush.” The Republican Leadership Council published pro-Nader ads in various states in hopes of dividing the Republican left vote, a strategy, which the Green Party later denied using. The Nader campaign affirmed that although Gore may have been the better candidate to elect instead of Bush, Ralph Nader and his supporters did not play an active role in Bush’s victory.

As this chapter of American history ended, the Election of 2000 brought about monumental changes to the nation’s democratic system. In 2002, Congress passed legislation to outlaw obsolete voting systems, yet although many states have purchased touch-screen voting options, there is no way of knowing whether someone is tempering with the system since the machine-programmers have full access to these devices. In January 2001, Civil Rights activists filed a lawsuit against Katherine Harris, The Florida Division of Elections, and Data Base Technologies, on the basis of prejudice and unconstitutional conduct. D.B.T and the Division concurred to reinstate the purged voters in order to see the possible results for the presidency. The outcome revealed there were a sufficient number of unjustly dismissed voters to transform the result of the presidency. As the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution state, the United States was founded on the basic fundamentals of freedom, equality, and, most importantly, democracy. Guaranteeing the viability of this Republic is in our hands, and Elections make it possible for us to sustain the efficiency of the democratic system. If we are careless with regard to the behaviors of our politicians, and the way in which are votes are counted, America will become another ordinary country of the world, without its egalitarian ideals to set it apart. The Election of 2000 should caution us never to let such a situation occur again.

- . _

References:
- 2000 Presidential Election--George W Bush and Al Gore. Martin Kelly.
4/5/10 <http://americanhistory.about.com/od/elections/p/election2000.htm>
- The Election of 2000. Steve Mount. January 24th 2010.
4/4/10 <http://www.usconstitution.net/elec2000.html>
- Perez Ray Richards, Sekler Joan. 'Unprecedented: the 2000 Election."
Alterna vision Films, 2002.
- Posner, Richard. Breaking the Deadlock. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001.
- Election News 2000: What Happened?. April Davis. 12/7/10.
4/17/10. <http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=3125
- How Bush's Man at Fox News Worked to Shape the Outcome of the US Election. Kate Randall. November 7th 2000.
4/16/10. <http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/nov2000/fox-n17.shtml>
- The Controversy Over the 2000 Presidential Election Results. Bazza. January 16th 2009. 4/8/10. <http://newsflavor.com/opinions/the-controversy-over-the-2000-presidential-election-results/>
- Common Dreams, Progressive Newswire. October 9, 2000.
- Meckler, Laura. October 27, 2000. “GOP Group to Air Pro-Nader T.V ads,” Washington Post.
- Katha Pollitt. Don't Blame Ralph. The Nation. November 20, 2000 issue.
- Daniel Niblock. “Proof that George Bush Stole the 2000 Election.” 5/18/10
- “How we Got Here: A Timeline on the Florida Recount.” CNN. December 13, 2000. 5/13/10.
- Jackson, Brooks. November 16, 2000. “Hanging Chads often viewed by Courts as a Sign of Voter Intent.” CNN. 5/13/10.
- Smith, Matt. “Gore Retracts Concession as Florida eyes Recount in Presidential Race.” November 8, 2000. 5/18/10. <http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/11/07/election.president/>

Also by Idil Baysal: America’s Deteriorating Relationship with Turkey