US/president/elec/2000

the 2000 US Presidential election

About

The 2000 US presidential election^A was the culmination of the 2000 US presidential race. Had all votes in the 2000 presidential election been properly counted, the winner would have been Al Gore; due to a technicality exacerbated by Republican guerrilla tactics, George W. Bush was awarded the presidency before a recount of the compromised Florida vote was complete. There was also strong evidence of election fraud during both this election and the next one.

some points

• "Although it was reported – in The New York Times, no less – that Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush in a statewide recount of Florida 'no matter what standard was chosen to judge voter intent,' most Americans don't know to this day that Gore actually won the 2000 election. The reason is a small percentage of Republican spin and a large percentage of journalistic cowardice in the mainstream media following 9/11. (This cowardice is limited to the USA, by the way – the story was extensively covered in most of the rest of the world.)"
  • The Florida recount that was stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court wasn't a statewide recount, which is why that particular recount wouldn't have affected the outcome.
    • This is actually two claims:
      • The Florida recount that was stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court wasn't a statewide recount. (True.)
      • The Florida recount could not have affected the outcome.
        • There is no evidence to support this. Bush's national lead was extremely narrow, within the margin of error for machine-based voting; if the precincts being recounted could not have influenced the election, then surely (1) there would have been no question about needing a recount and Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris would have certified the election for Bush much earlier, rather than waiting until the recount was already in progress, and (2) Gore wouldn't have bothered going to the trouble of suing Bush and Harris, as the outcome of the trial could not have affected the final election results.
• The Fall of the Athenian Republic at Snopes debunks some inaccurate Internet-rumors about the 2000 election

Related Pages

• Parts of the 2000 US Republican Party Platform now stand in stark contradiction to the official Republican position on the US invasion of Iraq, which was initiated by the Republican majority and president, over stiff objections from many non-Republicans and under false pretenses.

Links

Reference

• Wikipedia
• Conservapedia
• Sourcewatch:
  • U.S. election irregularities in 2000
• 4LawSchool: Bush v. Gore: a fairly detailed description and analysis of the events leading to the final decision

to file

• The Florida Recount of 2000: apparently, the best information available indicates that Bush probably would have won even a full recount. This page needs to be reconciled with Thom Hartmann's AlterNet article

Related

• 2020/09/23 [L..T] The Election That Could Break America “If the vote is close, Donald Trump could easily throw the election into chaos and subvert the result. Who will stop him?”
• 2006/10/25 [L..T] Will The Next Election Be Hacked? «The debacle of the 2000 presidential election made it all too apparent to most Americans that our electoral system is broken. And private-sector entrepreneurs were quick to offer a fix: Touch-screen voting machines, promised the industry and its lobbyists, would make voting as easy and reliable as withdrawing cash from an ATM.» ... «But as midterm elections approach this November, electronic voting machines are making things worse instead of better. Studies have demonstrated that hackers can easily rig the technology to fix an election — and across the country this year, faulty equipment and lax security have repeatedly undermined election primaries.»

Notes

Originally posted in a comment here.

Some verifiable facts:

1. Factcheck says their conclusions are based on a 2001 study conducted by 8 news organizations.
2. Factcheck links to a CNN article for more information about the study.
3. The CNN article is no longer at the URL given.
4. The article is still available on archive.org, and last appears on December 18, 2008.
5. That article appears to match Factcheck's interpretation.
6. There was also an article in the New York Times about what appears to be the same study.
7. That article affirms that Gore's challenge would not have overturned the Bush victory, but unlike the CNN article it suggests that a broader recount might well have done so:

"But the consortium, looking at a broader group of rejected ballots than those covered in the court decisions, 175,010 in all, found that Mr. Gore might have won if the courts had ordered a full statewide recount of all the rejected ballots."

...which admittedly is still a pretty thin hope... but then Thom Hartmann (who in my view does have some credibility) had this to say about it:

Although it was reported -- in The New York Times, no less -- that Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush in a statewide recount of Florida "no matter what standard was chosen to judge voter intent," most Americans don't know to this day that Gore actually won the 2000 election. The reason is a small percentage of Republican spin and a large percentage of journalistic cowardice in the mainstream media following 9/11. (This cowardice is limited to the USA, by the way -- the story was extensively covered in most of the rest of the world.)

In the 2000 case, The New York Times, on November 12, 2001, published a story summarizing the work of the newspaper consortium that spent nearly a year counting all the ballots in the 2000 Florida election. They found that a statewide recount -- the process the Florida Supreme Court had mandated and which had begun when George W. Bush sued before the US Supreme Court to stop the recount -- "could have produced enough votes to tilt the election his [Gore's] way, no matter what standard was chosen to judge voter intent."

...and I'm out of time for trying to figure out if that makes sense in light of the source(s) he cites.

So that may either be a groundless conspiracy theory or it may be pointing out yet another establishment media cover-up intended, in this case, to protect "voter confidence" in a corrupt system.