Could E2K have been this bad?

[tom]

Is there any plausible scenario that could have gotten us to Inaugeration Day without knowing who had won the election?

[Xen]

No I doubt it, worse come to worse they could do another vote in Florida sometime in December.

The thing that gets me though is they had said Gore won the state in the early part of that election night, then they came on the news saying there was a mistake and that Bush won the state. Very intresting this happened in the state where Dubyas brother was governor dont you think?

[Grey Wolf]

Did it not go to the Supreme Court ? What happens if the court is evenly split ? I assume someone would have to abstain or declare an interest or just perhaps die to achieve an even split, but if it occurs what happens ?

Grey Wolf

[Xen]

I think it would have to be another election held in Florida. IMO thats what should have happened. The Supreme Court had no right to appoint our president, thats a very scary thing.

[Scott Rosenthal]

What bilge...

The SCOUS simply stated that the criteria used by the Florida Supreme Court (which voted 4-3 to adopt a highly selective vote recount) was not sufficient (note that they - the SCOUS - had previously ruled on this very issue, and the Florida SC simply ignored the ruling...), and that the recount could not proceed in its existing form. Given the very short period of time left before the constitutionally-mandated deadline for submitting a vote count would expire, this effectively ended the process. Note that the Florida SC did have several proposed recount strategies in front of it that would have permitted a recount to proceed, but they rejected them in favor of a heavily biased strategy that would have recounted ONLY overwhelmingly Democratic districts, while ignoring all GOP-dominated districts. The Florida SC that did this was highly partisan (in fairness, state SCs typically are), certainly no less (likely much greater) than the SCOUS. The point is that the SOCUS didn't appoint or select anyone, and in fact they had given the Florida SC two separate opportunities to conduct a recount before they obvious bias of that court forced their intervention.

As to what would have happened if the courts hadn't intervened? A second vote was NOT going to happen (this would be unconstitutional on several different grounds), but a disputed ballot might have been challenged in the House of Representatives (the folks who actually vote to certify an election) the week before the inauguration. Given the balance of votes there, it is likely that there would have been any chance in the results, but one never knows...

The partisan nature of the election was (and remains) a point of contention, but might I ask what other outcome would have been possible? Election officials are indeed political (and thus partisan) appointees, a principle enshrined in Florida's constitution. Had Katherine Harris stepped down, who would have replaced her? To listen to some (SOME, not all) of Gore's partisans, only appointing Larry Tribe would have been a satisfactory result, which suggests that the debate wasn't about the process, but more about the outcome. The Florida SC was packed with partisans, and the SCOUS, while somewhat less partisan clearly was split along political lines. Hence this is more a question about which biased court ruling do you want to embrace, not which ruling was unbiased.

A final point, had Bush's brother wished to intervene (and it is important to note that Jeb Bush deliberately and quite publicly recused himself from any intervention in the election mess specifically because of his obvious conflict of interest), it would have been simple enough to have ignore Democratic protests at the beginning, and certified the vote count before the Florida courts could get their hands on the case. Neither Jeb Bush nor Katherine Harris did anything like this, though it would have been simple enough to do.

[Kuralyov]

...it is important to note that Jeb Bush deliberately and quite publicly recused himself from any intervention in the election mess specifically because of his obvious conflict of interest...

What he says is all well, but I think we can all agree that what politicians say and what they do are two completely different things. I seem to recall that W. said to Jeb that 'if he doesn't give me Florida then it's going to be a cold Thanjsgiving;' that right before the election, several Bush I and Reagan Administration officials flew down to Florida; and that on the dayof the election itself, several hundred Democrats, mostly black, weren't allowed to vote.

And if the SC had been evenly split, the abstainer(s) would be forced to vote.

[Scott Rosenthal]

For Bush to have had proxies in Florida before the election to 'ensure' the result would have required an almost supernatural prescience, since the state wasn't supposed to be in play. Florida was ONLY important because of several other (unlikely) events that came to pass, notably Gore defeats in TN and several other southern states where he was supposed to win. One might also point to razor thing Gore victories in MO and WI (not to mention NM and several other states such as PA, which was considered a lock for Bush), none of which could have been adequately predicted ahead of time. The point is that whatever Bush said to his brother (and since his brother had energetically campaigned for him BEFORE the election, comments like that were both expected and entirely reasonable), there is no evidence whatsoever that Jeb Bush interfered with the progress of the election itself.

On the subject of black voters not getting a chance to vote, 4 separate Justice Department investigations afterwards showed not a single case where a black individual was prevented from voting when they attempted to do so. Sharpton, Jackson, and the usual suspects made many accusations, but they came up rather short on the evidence side of things. A substantial number of former felons tried to vote (this was in direct violation of Florida law), but this group was disproportionately white, hence the suggestion that blacks were turned away from the polls as part of some racist conspiracy remains both unproven and unlikely...

[MerryPrankster]

I heard that if the imbroglio continued, the election for Pres. might have gone to the House and VP to the Senate. Supposedly the most-predicted outcome would have been a President Bush and a Vice President Lieberman.

Hmm...I wonder how that would work? Would Lieberman run against Bush in 2004? That might be fun...VP versus the President.

[Scott Rosenthal]

Elections go to the HOUSE, not the Senate, VP included. Even if they had gone to the Senate, the GOP had a majority at that time (remember, this was BEFORE Jeffords switched sides...), so you still don't get Lieberman...

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

What bilge...

The SCOUS simply stated that the criteria used by the Florida Supreme Court (which voted 4-3 to adopt a highly selective vote recount) was not sufficient (note that they - the SCOUS - had previously ruled on this very issue, and the Florida SC simply ignored the ruling...), and that the recount could not proceed in its existing form. Given the very short period of time left before the constitutionally-mandated deadline for submitting a vote count would expire, this effectively ended the process. Note that the Florida SC did have several proposed recount strategies in front of it that would have permitted a recount to proceed, but they rejected them in favor of a heavily biased strategy that would have recounted ONLY overwhelmingly Democratic districts, while ignoring all GOP-dominated districts. The Florida SC that did this was highly partisan (in fairness, state SCs typically are), certainly no less (likely much greater) than the SCOUS. The point is that the SOCUS didn't appoint or select anyone, and in fact they had given the Florida SC two separate opportunities to conduct a recount before they obvious bias of that court forced their intervention.

As to what would have happened if the courts hadn't intervened? A second vote was NOT going to happen (this would be unconstitutional on several different grounds), but a disputed ballot might have been challenged in the House of Representatives (the folks who actually vote to certify an election) the week before the inauguration. Given the balance of votes there, it is likely that there would have been any chance in the results, but one never knows...

The partisan nature of the election was (and remains) a point of contention, but might I ask what other outcome would have been possible? Election officials are indeed political (and thus partisan) appointees, a principle enshrined in Florida's constitution. Had Katherine Harris stepped down, who would have replaced her? To listen to some (SOME, not all) of Gore's partisans, only appointing Larry Tribe would have been a satisfactory result, which suggests that the debate wasn't about the process, but more about the outcome. The Florida SC was packed with partisans, and the SCOUS, while somewhat less partisan clearly was split along political lines. Hence this is more a question about which biased court ruling do you want to embrace, not which ruling was unbiased.

A final point, had Bush's brother wished to intervene (and it is important to note that Jeb Bush deliberately and quite publicly recused himself from any intervention in the election mess specifically because of his obvious conflict of interest), it would have been simple enough to have ignore Democratic protests at the beginning, and certified the vote count before the Florida courts could get their hands on the case. Neither Jeb Bush nor Katherine Harris did anything like this, though it would have been simple enough to do.

Scott, that is the biggest load of bunk I have ever heard. Jeb recused himself, but he didn't go off and play golf, he was still controlling things from behind the scenes. And Harris' actions were so slanted and partisan I don't even have time to start listing them.

That being said, if Gore had been a good citizen and demanded a recount of ALL votes instead of just in heavily Democratic candidates, making his team just as grossly partisan as Bush's, he would be President today.

The Supreme Court was disappointing because they overturned the decision of a lower court for no apparent reason, and the basis for their ruling would invalidate all elections everywhere, ever, and they knew it, because they specified that their decision applied ONLY to the current Florida vote, and no others, past, present, and future.

[David Howery]

While I'm no fan of Bush and I voted for Gore, I've never believed any of the conspiracy theories about FL. Scott gave the overwhelming reason why: no one could have predicted that it would all come down to who won there. By the time anyone realized how close it would be, it was too late to do any influencing, no matter who's brother was governor there.....

[emperorharry86]

Elections go to the HOUSE, not the Senate, VP included. Even if they had gone to the Senate, the GOP had a majority at that time (remember, this was BEFORE Jeffords switched sides...), so you still don't get Lieberman...

The newly elected Senate would have chosen the vice-president, and presuming a 50-50 tie (the senate was 50-50 at the time), Gore would have cast the tiebraeking vote for Lieberman.
So I'd assume Lieberman would be running against Bush right now.

[tom]

And when are we going to do something about faithless electors? Could they have tossed the thing back to the SCOUS in December 2000?

[Scott Rosenthal]

Abdul: Short of suicide, what could Jeb Bush have done to convince you that he wasn't 'pulling the strings' behind the scenes? He made no public statements, and none of the players involved (including the courts, and the lawyers on BOTH sides, many of whom wrote extensively about the experience later) ever suggested that his behavior had been anything less than proper. You want a villian here to validate your paranoia, you will have to find a better one.

Gore indeed created his own problems by trying to game the system with a skewed vote count, but there is very little evidence to suggest that he would have benefitted from doing otherwise. Now one of the recounts (using all ballots EXCEPT for the heavily GOP-slanting absentee ballots) did give Gore a victory (thinner than Bush's, by the way), but all of the other ones (and note that these were administered by a media consortium not known before or since for its friendliness to Bush) gave Bush bigger wins than in OTL.
You might be right about a recount giving different results (with the votes that close, it is simply impossible to ever know for sure), but making the comment that a recount would have certainly given the victory to either side is simply nonsense. Provide some evidence, not simply hyperbolic ventings from partisans of EITHER candidate.

Regarding the SCOUS decision, the court had every right to rule on a federal election, and their choice was to throw out a decision that flew in the face of their earlier ruling directed specifically at the court. Now both sides were clearly partisan in this ruling (how could it be otherwise?...this should be a good warning to those who wish to turn all difficult decisions over to the courts, and ignore the workings of democracy), but the court showed great wisdom in limiting the scope of their ruling to this election only. As you said, it would tend to undermine all elections over time. After all, do you really want to have every close election (and 2000 had numerous close states) dragged through the courts by aggrieved partisans every year?

On the subject of faithless electors, one might argue that they would have been most useful in this election, had their been overwhelming evidence of fraud, and the courts had refused to do anything about it. I suspect that the founders left them in the system to provide for that kind of 'fail-safe', but to be honest, I don't have any more than intuition to back it up...

[DuQuense]

Remember that the TV networks started calling the election before the polls closed in west Florida, Supposily stopping last minute Voters from brothering {assumtion that rural west Florida whould vote Republican} Thru I have allway wondered how many would be voters are affecfted by this.

Also Remember that the [??Impartial???] - NY Times & Media- Recount of All the Ballots Statewide, showed that Bush did get a Slim Majority of the Popular vote in Florida. Bush should have gone for the statewide option.

The Bigger Problem IMVHO is the winner take all Elector system, If The Us had a system where the electors are picked by electoral District, [Several States do this,] There would never have been a Question who won the most electors.

[Scott Rosenthal]

The whole point of the Electoral College was to dilute the impact of large states, something that would be lost with a district-based electoral system. A fairly effective electoral strategy (with a district-based system) would require only about 14-17 states, effectively disenfranchising the others. By using a winner-take-all system, it becomes extremely difficult to simply 'ignore' whole regions, thus ensuring (at least in principle) fairly 'national' candidates...

Check out the Federalist Papers for a far better description of the reasoning here than I have been able to present. I believe that Federalist 17 (I could be wrong about the number) has the best description...

[Paul Spring]

Scott R. - Thank you for setting the record straight. I'm sick and tired of listening to all the BS about the "partisan Supreme Court appointing the President." As you quite correctly pointed out, all that they did was overrule the highly partisan (Democratic) ruling of the Florida State Supreme Court.

The main bias in Florida was the premature declaration of a Gore victory by the national media, which almost certainly kept thousands of pro-Bush voters at home. If that hadn't happened, Bush would have won the state by a fairly small but incontestable margin, and the country would have been spared this whole load of silliness.

[tom]

Scott:
I just think that electors should be made a mathematical fiction, "points" rather than "people", so some guy can't vote for someone his state did not elect.

[Scott Rosenthal]

Tom: Your point is well taken, and I cannot say that I don't see the value of it. The point that the founders made (and yes, these were men, not demi-gods, but their creation has lasted quite nicely over a very long time, so I tend to respect their wisdom, or at least give it the benefit of the doubt) was that there would be times (rarely) when 'studied disobedience' might be necessary, even desirable. The founders were big on including the human factor as a check against a system run riot...a most amazing bit of insight, given that they lived long before large complex systems such as our own...

Paul: Thanks for the kind words, but lets not fall into the trap that some of our Democratic friends have. We will never know the results of the media's early call (or for that matter any of half-a-dozen other odd events of that night in numerous states), and perhaps we have to live with that. Elections, particularly ones this size, are not simply exact affairs, but 'fuzzy' events where many variables enter into things. We simply have to learn to live with some level of uncertainty, as uncomfortable as that might be at times...

[David Howery]

IMHO, the biggest lesson of the 2000 election should have been, "VOTE!!". If the turnout in FL had been higher, it's likely one candidate would have won unequivocally. As it was, I pictured thousands of Democrats in FL who didn't bother to vote kicking themselves the next day....

[Grimm Reaper]

I voted for Gore too, but there is no doubt that Bush won. The idea that the USSC could not intervene in a national election on the interpretation of the law is just silly. Could a state supreme court change other aspects of voting in a national election, say, the voting age? Technically the states COULD have a separate voting age, they generally just don't bother with it. Imagine a congressional election in a state which let's 16 year olds vote ONLY FOR STATE OFFICES.

Imagine if the USSC had stayed out of it?

1) Florida SSC, all Dems, get the state certified for Gore by arrangng the recount.
2) One congressman from each party questions the certification results, forcing the House to act. That's all it takes, a challenge from ONE congressman from each party.
3) The House, voting by STATE DELEGATIONS(one vote per state), has 30 GOP majority delegations, Bush wins.
4) The Dems CAN appeal to the Senate. If the Senate, on January 3, picks Bush, it's over. If it picks GORE, based on Gore and Lieberman voting for themselves, the Constitution declares Congress split and allows ONE PERSON the final decision.
5) The governor of the state in question. Jeb Bush
6) Less than two weeks before inauguration, Dubya is chosen to be president by his brother.

Wonder how much screaming we would then hear about the USSC's gutless refusal to act in early December and the pain the nation went through?

As an aside, the early call for Gore was based on an inept polling group which the national media had adopted, throwing aside the AP and such for election 2000. In Florida this group had a total of 42 observers, for 67 counties. In 2002, the group messed up again. They're out of business now. If the AP can't regroup in time, there may be no consensus poll watchers for the media.

Another aside. Bob Bechel, staunch super-Dem and Mondale campaign manager in 1984 did declare that the early call cost the GOP 8000-9000 in the Florida Panhandle alone.

A third aside. For 20 years the Dems have claimed the calling of the election for Reagan after he carried the belt west of the Mississippi cost Jimmy Carter over a million votes. In 2000, the call was earlier and the election closer.

How about this for alternate history?

George Bush spent much of the last two weeks, cash and appearances, in California, a hopeless state for him which alarmed the wiser GOP who realized how close it was. Out of party loyalty, Bush went there.

1) Realizing he is in genuine danger in his brother's state, Dubya hits Florida hard, carries it by about 30,000 votes on election night, and is declared the winner. Changes?
2) NOT realizing the danger, he instead makes a more casual general effort, avoiding California. Bush carries New Mexico in 2000, giving him 5 more electoral votes before the Florida mess hits. Changes?
3) Bush hits the Midwest, changing the results by about one percent of the turnout. As a result he carries Wisconsin and Minnesota, missing Iowa by a few hundred votes, leaving him with 267 votes in the electoral college as the Florida fiasco begins. Changes?

[Scott Rosenthal]

Grimm: Outstanding insight into one of the true nodal points of the election, Bush's (actually Rove's, how this guy gets the rep as some evil genius is beyond me) ridiculous waste of resources in CA. Had that money (more importantly those volunteers) been active in some of the marginal states, even a tiny shift would have been enough.

Another interesting node to investigate too would be MO. What if the GOP had paid a bit more attention to that state, particularly to the shenanigans that the Dems pulled re: keeping the polls open later in several urban (=black) electoral districts. Given how close the Ashcroft-Carnahan vote was, shutting down the polls ON TIME (not early, but not late) certainly would have made the difference. This gives us Senator Ashcroft, not AG Ashcroft, and likely no Jeffords switch a few months later....

[Grimm Reaper]

Scott, very interesting point regarding Ashcroft and his defeat in 2000. Personally I suspect he bowed out for a cabinet position, so we could see a GOP yielding gracefully while Gore was hammering away. Pretty sure some such fix was in.

As an added point let me just say this:
Iowa 7 electoral, decided by less than 8,000
Oregon 7 electoral, decided by less than 8,000
New Mexico 5 electoral, decided by less than 200
Washington 11 electoral, decided by less than 12,000
Minnesota 10 electoral, decided by less than 11,000
Wisconsin 11 electoral, decided by less than 12,000

All for Gore in 2000. Less than 52,000 votes the other way and Florida would not have mattered. Basis for more ideas?

[Scott Rosenthal]

Consider that in most of those states, the GOP has made significant gains since 2000. It should be an interesting 2004...

[Grey Wolf]

George Bush spent much of the last two weeks, cash and appearances, in California, a hopeless state for him which alarmed the wiser GOP who realized how close it was. Out of party loyalty, Bush went there.

1) Realizing he is in genuine danger in his brother's state, Dubya hits Florida hard, carries it by about 30,000 votes on election night, and is declared the winner. Changes?
2) NOT realizing the danger, he instead makes a more casual general effort, avoiding California. Bush carries New Mexico in 2000, giving him 5 more electoral votes before the Florida mess hits. Changes?
3) Bush hits the Midwest, changing the results by about one percent of the turnout. As a result he carries Wisconsin and Minnesota, missing Iowa by a few hundred votes, leaving him with 267 votes in the electoral college as the Florida fiasco begins. Changes?

Why do you take it as given that Bush's visiting these places will increase his vote there ? If I was undecided and saw Bush on campaign, I would be quite certain to make a definite decision to vote AGAINST him

Grey Wolf

[Raymann]

Whatever the outcome, unless we're from Florida it shouldn't be our decision how they voted. Each state has the right to decided how it wants to vote for President regardless of what other States think of as "fair". The legal case should have stopped at the Florida Supreme Court and gone no farther. The US Constitution says nothing about counting individual votes so they had no business hearing about it.

P.S. I was a Bush supporter :)

[DominusNovus]

Why do you take it as given that Bush's visiting these places will increase his vote there ? If I was undecided and saw Bush on campaign, I would be quite certain to make a definite decision to vote AGAINST him

Grey Wolf
Its a general rule of thumb that campaigning in an area boosts your results there (motivating your supporters to vote). Besides, there are plenty of people who might feel differently than you.

[Scott Rosenthal]

Grey: I rather doubt that ANYTHING Bush could have done (except perhaps ritual suicide) would have pleased you. In point of fact, there is typically a strong positive correlation between a candidate's propensity to appear in a state, and his gain in votes from that state. More to the point however, I believe what was being referred to was comittment of resources (money, and ESPECIALLY volunteers, who were in short supply on both sides in the closing days of the campaign), which I believe that you would agree would be expected to have a positive impact on a candidate's standing.

Rayman: Your point is simply silly. This was a federal election, and as a result, it was absolutely within the province of the SCOUS. Even the liberal members of the court agreed upon that (remember, they voted 9-0 to take the case), and there is a mountain of case law to support their position. The idea that a state could determine how it would behave in a federal election with no federal check upon that choice is little more than nonsense...after all, what if a state decided to disenfranchise blacks/women/favored minority of the month/etc....