Vista Online

Fall/Winter 2001

So Now What?

Election 2000 Aftermath

Democracy can be messy. If you ever doubted that, you need only look at the 2000 Presidential elections.

It was not necessarily easy to choose between the candidates. While there were clear differences between Texas Governor George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore on social security and education policy, the candidates took similar positions on issues ranging from expanding the military to free trade with China to welfare reform.

Opinions about Bill Clinton may have influenced more voters than the positions of Bush and Gore. If you saw the Clinton presidency as a period of peace and prosperity, you had a clear candidate in Vice President Gore. If you defined the Clinton legacy as moral decay and drifting leadership, then Governor Bush was your man.

The election results showed the nation split almost exactly down the middle. The Republicans were left with a razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives. The Senate was divided equally, literally fifty/fifty, for the first time in American history. In fact, there was no clear presidential winner.

Al Gore won the popular vote by about 300,000 votes, less than one percent of the total ballots cast, but Gore’s popular vote victory did not mean that he had won.

Many Americans were surprised to discover that a man could win the popular vote and lose the election. In fact, to become president you must win in the Electoral College. On the day after the election both men needed Florida’s 25 electoral votes to control the Electoral College.

The vote in Florida, initially counted as a 1,700-vote victory for Governor Bush, was so close that state law mandated a recount. Bush’s sweep of the small states, which are over-represented in the Electoral College, allowed him to win in the Electoral College while losing the popular vote.

The conflict in Florida became brutal because each side believed, with some reason, that they had won the supreme prize in American politics, and that the other side was attempting to cheat them, and the American people, out of a fair election. Governor Bush won the initial Florida vote by 1,700 ballots, both of the machine recounts by 327 votes, and the final vote by 537. Vice President Gore, however, had good reason to believe that he deserved a majority of uncounted votes in at least three Florida counties.

The intense scrutiny of voting in Florida clearly showed that elections, on the local level, are a very messy process. The United States has outdated voting machines because you and I as taxpayers would rather have our tax money spent on road repairs and welfare programs and virtually anything except new voting machines. Furthermore, the voting laws in Florida were contradictory.
On the one hand, Florida state law mandated a recount in cases where the vote was close, as Vice President Gore desired. On the other hand, state law declared that ballots had to be counted and certified within a week of the initial vote, which would allow Governor Bush to win. Both sides had reason to claim that their opponents were obstructing the law.

In the scramble for votes, Democrats insisted that county election boards attempt to ascertain the intent of voters who only “dimpled” the ballots, but did not break the paper so that a machine could read them. Republicans insisted that military absentee ballots, which were not properly postmarked or filled out, still be counted. Some Democrats claimed that “butterfly” ballots, which had the names of candidates printed on both sides of the ballot, were too difficult to understand. In a more serious charge, African-American leaders argued that police intimidated or misled many voters at the polling places. The vote-counting process was messy.

But, all elections are messy. More ballots were thrown out as unreadable in Chicago than in Florida. Absentee ballots across the nation have been thrown out on technicalities. We realize this now because we scrutinized the Florida election so intensely. This should prod us to improve our voting technology and untangle our laws. The election process may never be perfect, but should clearly be improved.

The recount process ended up in the Florida courts, the Federal Courts, and the Supreme Court, where it ran smack into another of American’s cherished beliefs: the impartiality of the judicial system. In theory, the courts administer the law without prejudice to person or party. However, in these cases the courts ruled along ideological lines.

The Florida Supreme Court, largely appointed by Democrats, consistently approved Vice President Gore’s requests for continuations of the recounting process, even beyond the deadline that court had initially set. The Supreme Court, on the other hand, ended the recount process, and made Bush President, by a five to four decision along conservative/liberal lines.

The courts have had a political dimension since the Federalists packed the benches at the beginning of the republic. However, in the last few decades the political decisions of the courts have become bitterly controversial. The manner in which the 2000 election played out can only increase that bitterness.

The candidates did themselves no service by the manner in which they handled the contest. Vice President Gore insisted on counting every vote, but only in the counties where he was sure to pick up votes. Meanwhile he tried to block the count of absentee ballots, which were likely to go against him. He looked like a sore loser.

Governor Bush entered the race as the champion of the states against the federal government, and of the will of the people against the courts. He violated these principles by repeatedly asking the federal government to overturn the decisions of the state courts, and constantly asking the courts to stop the counting of the people’s votes. He damaged his own causes to win.

The importance of all of this? In the short-term it was reassuring. There was no thought of a coup, and the people waited very patiently and maturely for the process to work itself out. In the middle-term, the result was devastating. The next president, whether Bush or Gore, was going to lose his legitimacy by winning in the courts. The opposing party would undoubtedly work to make sure that the winner could achieve nothing.

The long-term importance of this election is much harder to discern. The elections of 1800 and 1876 were uglier, and we survived. However, if the nation remains this closely divided, and we have a similar outcome in one or two more elections, then people will begin to seriously doubt the system, with unpredictable results for the Republic.

Democracy is messy. James Madison explained in Federalist #10 that the Constitution was designed so that opposing interests could compete without any one gaining absolute control and running roughshod over the others. It still works. No one could claim that any one interest has complete control of our divided Legislature or Judiciary.

However, when interests with nearly equal strength contend for the highest elective office in the land, things can be nasty, brutal and go on far too long. If you want a system, which works smoothly and without hitches, look for a benevolent dictatorship, and hope that it remains benevolent. If you value our democracy, then educate yourself, determine what you believe, and get involved in the process.

Scott Neumann
Assistant Professor of
History and Political Science

Last updated: July 9, 2001