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Election Of 2000 Essay

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The United States Presidential election that took place in the year 2000 was between George Bush and Al Gore. The vote was very close and it ended up all coming down to Florida. Once the votes were counted and it was revealed that Bush had won, Gore wanted a recount of the votes. The matter was taken to the Florida supreme court and Gore ended up winning the case. So a manual recount was started. Bush decided to take the case to the Federal Supreme Court. Bush argued that the recount that was currently taking place was unconstitutional because it violated the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment. The court ruled 5 - 4 in favor of Bush and the manual recount was stopped. The votes that had been counted had closed the gap …show more content…

Originally the Florida Supreme Court ordered that a recount was to happen in Palm Beach, Volusia, Miami-Dade, and Broward counties. Bush used the Equal Protection Clause from the Fourteenth Amendment to argue Florida’s ruling. Bush won in the Federal Supreme Court and established that the recount was unconstitutional because it was giving more protection to these county’s ballots than others. The vote to was so close that the decision was essentially made by one person. This shows that the supreme court didn’t vote in what they believed in and rather wanted to help out their own party. If even one of the Federal Supreme Court Justices would have voted for what they actually believed in, then the outcome of the election could have been very …show more content…

Around thirty percent of the total votes cast in the election were either not counted or rejected due to this error. This happened because the voters did not fully punch out the chads on the ballots. The error resulted in hanging, dimpled, and pregnant chads. When the ballots that were completed incorrectly went through the voting machines, they were rendered invalid and not counted. When the recount took place the Florida election officials had to determine the intent of the voters. The election officials claimed that it was hard to interpret the vote because of the hanging, dimpled, and pregnant

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