id be interested to see how you all would finish my story.
To continue the story
Official, judicial, statewide recounts are held in Montana, South Dakota, Iowa, New Mexico. The procedure for the recounts is agreed to in advance by both parties. Both parties have representatives to verify that the procedures are followed down the line, and that the recount is accurate. Both parties agree in advance to abide by the results of the recounts.
The recounts swing all of these states to Bush by close margins. Since both parties have agreed in advance to the procedures and to the results, Bush is declared the winner in these states.
The electoral vote count now stands at
Gore/Simon 274
Bush/Cohen 264
The automatic recount in Louisiana reduced the Gore margin in Louisiana to about 1,600 votes.
The Republicans exhausted all legal avenues available to them in an attempt to try to prove massive voter fraud in Louisiana, going through state circuit courts, state supreme court, and to the U.S. supreme court. They alleged there were tens of thousands of invalid ballots cast. Although much evidence was produced along this line, the courts would not go so far as to have the election overturned.
The best the Republicans could do was to get a statewide recount, which was to include even the disputed ballots. This recount resulted in a win for Gore of 537 votes, and Gore is declared as the winner of the election and becomes the President Elect.
Late election polls and even exit polls showed Bush as the clear winner in Louisiana.
In the minds of Republicans, the Louisiana Democrats had stole the election.
Two months after Al Gore is sworn in as President and Paul Simon is sworn in as Vice President, under intensive interrogation from the Louisiana state Attorney General's Department, a high ranking Democratic Party member in Louisiana admits to conspiring to commit voter fraud. As it turned out, he and other Democratic Party members had bribed election officials, known to be friendly to the Democratic Party, in key areas of the state to cast thousands of ballots for voters who had not shown up to vote. This had the result of padding Gore's vote total by up to 180,000 votes, giving him the win.
President Gore denounces these "criminals and hoodlums" and vows they will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
By then, however, the legitimacy of the Gore Presidency is in tatters.
There is a re-match in 1992, in which former Vice President George HW Bush/Senator William Cohen defeat President Al Gore/Vice President Paul Simon by a large margin.
