The Presidential Election of 2000 is easily one of the most controversial elections in United States History. The two major candidates were Al Gore, and George W. Bush. Al Gore was the Democratic nominee from the District of Columbia. From 1993-2001, Al Gore was the Vice President under the 42nd president, Bill Clinton. George W. Bush was the Governor of Texas from 1995-2000. This election was controversial because of the state of Florida counting mixup, and the electoral college system America uses. Bush’s brother was Jeb Bush, who was the governor of Florida in 2000. The day after the election, no one really knew who actually had won the election, Bush or Gore. This caused people all over the country to be confused in all sorts of ways, and …show more content…
This recount was going to be done manually, and by precincts. The Florida Election Code 102.141 made it mandatory to have a recount because of the close margin. To get ready for potential legal action, Bush hired Roger Stone and James Baker to help protect Bush legally and to get him to become president as fast as possible. Gore hired Warren Christopher, who worked with Gore during Bill Clinton’s presidency. During the recount, the Bush administration started going to the court system, they did this to plead their case in not trying to have a recount. The Florida Supreme Court ordered recounts to go on because of how class the results were in votes between Gore and Bush. The Bush administration then pushed the case to the United States Supreme Court to handle the case. 36 days after the election, while recounts were still going on, the United States Supreme Court declared in a 5-4 vote that there should be no recount in Florida. The United States Supreme Court stated that having recounts in Florida violated the fourteenth amendment because Florida was counting votes differently in the state. With the confusing ballot, not much could have been done because the confusing ballot was approved by election officials in Florida. There wasn’t much discussion about the confusing ballots before the election, so nothing could’ve been done that would have affected the 2000