Ah, wonderful can of worms you opened up there, Ann.
I could wax on quite a bit about this, but .... ok, you convinced me.
That famous butterfly ballot was designed by... a Democrat, Theresa Lapore, the Supervisor of Elections for Palm Beach County. If people were confused, it was her fault. Florida law stated that each county was responsible for creating its own ballots. In this case, heavily Democratic Palm Beach had its ballot designed by a Democrat. Jeb Bush had nothing to do with it. In fact he recused himself and stayed far away from the counting process.
You also failed to mention the fact that a number of television networks declared that Florida had been won by Al Gore... one hour before the balloting closed in the western part of the state. The western panhandle of the state votes heavily Republican with a rural and heavily military population. Independent analysis of the election on the effect of that early call showed Bush to have lost roughly anywhere from 6,000-15,000 votes because of disgusted Republicans who went home rather than voting since the state had already been lost. The reason why the state had two closing times was because the western part of the state is in the Central Time Zone while the eastern part is in the Eastern Time Zone.
Many complained later that at 5:30AM Eastern Time (I remember because I was up at 2:30 Pacific Time watching election returns), Fox News declared Bush to be the winner of Florida, followed by several other networks. This obviously caused Gore to lose votes. But wait. Polls had been closed for over ten hours, unlike the situation in which the networks had called the state for Gore an hour before the panhandle closed. All networks retracted their call hours later.
Al Gore, in challenging the election in Florida, did not challenge the state election by asking for a fair recount. He challenged it in only four counties, all of them heavily Democratic. He demanded a recount of all the chads and dents, using counting techniques never before used by any county in the country. He did not ask for recounts in any of the Republican counties. Ask yourself if that is fair. Among the votes he wanted to have counted for himself was a hole punched for another candidate but only a pregnant chad in his slot. He also wanted double votes counted for himself. The only way you can have those count is if you were somehow clairvoyant and could read the intent of the voter because of a small dent on a piece of paper or two holes.
Some complained that Pat Buchanan got an unusual number of votes in Palm Beach, so obviously all of those votes were Gores. Not so fast. Pat Buchanan actually had quite a following in Palm Beach County, and had campaigned there numerous times. It was one of the counties where he had done much of his fund raising. So maybe that unusual count wasn't so unusual after all.
Ah, but what about Kathryn Harris? Clearly she stole the election from Gore. Well, Harris took unusual steps to appear non-partisan, not that it helped since she was demonized from day one. She hired a Democratic law firm with her lead attorney being a prominent Democrat, Joe Klock. And in each case, she followed the letter of the law, though in each case she was overruled by the Florida Supreme Court which made up law as it went along, basically ignoring the state's statutes. It was so bad that the Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court, Democrat Charles Wells appointed by Democratic governor Lawton Chiles, chastised his associates for their rulings in a blistering dissent, believing the rulings would create a constitutional crisis.
Dissent of Chief Justice Charles Wells Fast forward to the US Supreme Court at the time. Of the nine, seven had indeed been appointed by Republican presidents. Of the seven, only three of them were conservatives: the late William Rehnquist (Nixon), Clarence Thomas (Bush, the elder), and Antonin Scalia (Reagan). The most liberal member of the court was John Paul Stevens, appointed by a Republican, Gerald Ford. David Souter, a George H.W. Bush appointee, was also incredibly liberal. He was recommended to President Bush by John Sununu, the president's Chief of Staff, since Souter came from Sununu's home state of New Hampshire. Bush appointed him on that recommendation alone and had done insufficient checking of his record. Bush claimed that Souter was the biggest regret of his presidency. Two others were mavericks, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy, both Reagan appointees, neither of whom vote consistently liberal or conservatively. The other members of the court were Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (both Clinton appointees), and Clarence Thomas, a George H.W. Bush appointee.
The Supreme Court made two decisions that day. One was whether the vote was constitutional. The second was whether to conduct a full recount. The decision on whether the vote was constitutional was 7-2 against as a violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution with the liberal Stephen Breyer and David Souter voting with the majority. Only Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens, the Ford appointee, voted in favor of Gore. On the question of the recount and whether a full state recount would take place, the vote was closer, 5-4 against where Breyer and Souter voted for a recount along with Ginsburg and Stevens. The press completely ignored the more salient 7-2 decision, which basically said that Gore was using unconstitutional methods to win the election and focused solely on the 5-4 decision.
The reasoning behind the 5-4 vote was that they deemed insufficient time remained to conduct the recount according to Florida state law without risking the disenfranchisement of all Florida electors with the safe harbor day already passed (electors met on Dec. 18, 2000 while the Supreme Court's decision was on December 12), and set the final vote count as a George W. Bush win at 537 votes. As a note, in 2004, Bush won Florida by 10% (55-45), or 500,000 votes.
Let's fast forward even more. Following Gore's concession, many news agencies went to Florida to conduct their own recounts and there were very many. The newspapers and networks used several counting methods to see what the results would be, including using Gore's own counting methods. Every nick or indentation was counted if it was in the same zip code as Gore's name. In every single case but one, Bush won the recount. The only recount that Gore won was when double votes were counted for him, exclusively. And then he won by a grand total of two votes, IIRC. As a note, there isn't a county in the entire country that allows double votes to count. They are always thrown out.
The correct decision was made and the proper winner became president. Even the newspapers conceded that after conducting their own recounts.
You can argue about whether it's fair for the popular vote winner to lose the electoral college, but those were the rules of the game going in that had been in place for two hundred years. Ask President Samuel Tildon how it felt to win the popular vote as he watched Rutherford B. Hayes take the oath of office. It has happened four times in our nation's history.
John Quincy Adams became the sixth president despite losing the popular vote to Andrew Jackson. Jackson became the seventh. Neither had a majority of electoral votes, so the presidency was decided in the House of Representatives. Ironically, Adams' father, John Adams, was the second president of the United States.
Samuel Tildon won the popular vote but lost the presidency when the vote went to the House. In a back room deal, Republicans got their president in Rutherford B. Hayes (nineteenth president) at the price of withdrawing all Union troops from the southern states, thus ending Reconstruction following the Civil War.
Grover Cleveland failed to win re-election, losing to Benjamin Harrison despite having the popular vote. Cleveland won four years later to become the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms (22nd and 24th president). Harrison had a majority of the electoral votes so this was decided by the electoral college. Benjamin Harrison's grandfather was the ninth president, William Henry Harrison, who set a record of shortest presidential term when he died in office 31 days into his term of pneumonia.
George W. Bush (43rd president) became president after losing the popular vote to Al Gore. He won Florida by 537 votes.
