Election of 2000 Quotes

Although there were many irregularities in the 2000 election and many thought that Bush was not the rightful winner, Nadar’s statement is ironic. He entered the race as the Green Party Nominee and siphoned off many more votes from Gore than from Bush. In Florida, the pivotal state, Gore lost by less than 600 votes and but for Nader, Gore would have won and become President. Then for him to later blame Bush’s maneuvers for Gore’s defeat, ignoring his own determinative role struck most observers as the height of selective analysis.

Baker led the legal team for George W. Bush and had filed numerous lawsuits including to the U. S. Supreme Court.

Florida’s vote counting system was extremely primitive and highly subjective, and no one could really ever tell whether Al Gore or George W. Bush ever won the state whose electoral votes determined the election of 2000. The Supreme Court finally decided that Bush would be president, but no one wanted such a situation to ever happen again. Blackwell had better technology in Ohio in the next election but Ohio various techniques were used to keep some Blacks from voting.

Bush’s speech from the House Chamber of the Texas Capitol after the Supreme Court had ruled 5 to 4 that his opponent, who had won the popular vote, could not do hand counts on contested ballots. He was trying to unify a very divided country.

George W. Bush and the Republicans The President surprised even his supporters by publicly referring to the taint on the George W. Bush election where a 5-4 Supreme Court decision prevented the hand counting of Florida ballots after Bush had already lost the popular vote and was in danger of losing the electoral vote as well.

The first Jew to run for the Vice Presidency on a major party ticket.

In the 2000 Presidential Election, Gore won the popular vote, but the electoral votes were so close that the winner depended on a single state, Florida. However, that state’s election process was poor and there were many irregularities and problems in vote counting and recounting. The Republican Secretary of State stated that the Republican candidate won, but the irregularities persuaded the Florida Supreme Court to order a recount. That decision was appealed to the Supreme Court which decided to stop the recount, giving the Presidency to Bush. All nine Supreme Court Justices were unhappy that they had to decide a case which determined who the President would be, but if they had refused to hear the case, the raw politics of Florida would determine the President. Stevens wrote this quotation in his dissent, and ironically it was about the only thing that the nine justices all agreed to—that the nation’s confidence in the Supreme Court and the legal system was the loser. There was no way for the court to win, unless they could have mustered an overwhelming majority for one side or the other. That proved impossible, so all the justices tried to make the best of a bad situation in which they had been placed.

The infamous breakdown in the Presidential election of 2000 was in large part the result of no rules or training for the election officials. Handley was one of the few officials who publicly admitted that the eligibility of a ballot was dependent on very subjective decisions of many different people.

The column was written in the midst of the confusing 2000 Presidential election.

His network called the election early for Bush when in reality there was no clear winner.

The Vice President had beaten George W. Bush by ½ Million Votes, but in the Electoral College the election was in doubt over many irregularities in Florida. Gore had wanted to have a hand count of all ballots that had not gone through the Florida voting machines and thus were not counted. The Bush forces opposed this in the courts, and in a highly partisan 5-4 decision, the U. S. Supreme Court overruled the Florida Supreme Court and stopped the inspection of the ballots leaving the actuality of the over 50,000 ballots unknown thus giving Florida to Bush assuring him of the Presidency. There was much tension as to whether the Gore forces would accept the Court’s decision, especially in the light of disclosures that the attorney son of one of the Bush justices was employed by the law firm representing Bush, and that Bush’s father had appointed another justice voting to make Bush president. A crisis was averted.

The Supreme Court divided 5-4 and all the Florida ballots were not counted.