Who was the rightful winner of the 2000 Election?

[E-Dawg]

Since I made a similar poll for the 1876 election, I might as well make a poll for this disputed election too.

[dw93]

I use to say Gore, now I think if the recount did in fact go to its conclusion there's a 50/50 chance it would've gone either way, so I can't give an answer. I do think we would've been better off with Gore at the helm from 2001-05/09 than were were with Bush.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

Gore, no question. I kind of wish he’d been 1/50th as crazy and willing to fight for it as Trump was when he’d lost fair and square.

[Inverted Things]

Ooohhh, this one is tough!

I'm going to say Gore, for two primary reasons:

(1) The Palm Beach ballot caused a lot of folks who intended to vote for Gore to vote for someone else.

(2) The Florida recount project indicated that a full statewide recount, regardless of ballot standard, would have resulted in a very narrow Gore victory.  (less than 200 votes!)

With that said, the Palm Beach ballot was designed in good faith by members of both parties.  And Gore never actually appeared to want a statewide recount.  The recount Gore wanted, if completed, would have still resulted in a Bush win.

So, I can't say that Bush stole a win from Gore here.  It was razor close, and a few arbitrary decisions made by good-faith actors happened to break in favor of Bush.

[Pericles]

The election was basically a tie. A few hundred votes out of millions in Florida is not a meaningful margin either way.

[S019]

With that said, the Palm Beach ballot was designed in good faith by members of both parties.  And Gore never actually appeared to want a statewide recount.  The recount Gore wanted, if completed, would have still resulted in a Bush win.

This is exactly the reason that I voted Bush, but I agree Gore would've won a statewide recount.

[Arbitrage1980]

Lot of liberals have a flawed understanding of what happened in the 2000 election.

Yes, voters accidentally voted Buchanan in Palm Beach County due to the ballot, but it's their fault for not properly reading the ballot. That's not Bush's fault. It goes both ways. The networks should not have called FL for Gore before polls in Panhandle closed.

There was a statewide recount. W Bush won by 537 votes, and the election was certified. Gore wanted a selective recount of just Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Volusia (counties he won). That was rejected by circuit judge Sanders Saul. But FL supreme court ruled in favor of Gore and gave him something Gore didn't even request: a manual recount of all undervotes. That was when Bush appealed to SCOTUS.

Bush vs Gore consisted of two decisions. The first was 7-2 and ruled that Bush's rights under the Equal Protection Clause were violated because a state must apply uniform counting standards throughout the entire state. It cannot do a selective recount or do a recount of specific type of votes. The second decision, 5-4, was obviously more controversial. It ruled that there was not enough time for another statewide recount to meet the safe harbor deadline for electoral vote certification. The deadline for the Electoral College vote was approaching.

There is no evidence that Gore won FL.

[Inverted Things]

Lot of liberals have a flawed understanding of what happened in the 2000 election.

Yes, voters accidentally voted Buchanan in Palm Beach County due to the ballot, but it's their fault for not properly reading the ballot. That's not Bush's fault. It goes both ways. The networks should not have called FL for Gore before polls in Panhandle closed.

There was a statewide recount. W Bush won by 537 votes, and the election was certified. Gore wanted a selective recount of just Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Volusia (counties he won). That was rejected by circuit judge Sanders Saul. But FL supreme court ruled in favor of Gore and gave him something Gore didn't even request: a manual recount of all undervotes. That was when Bush appealed to SCOTUS.

Bush vs Gore consisted of two decisions. The first was 7-2 and ruled that Bush's rights under the Equal Protection Clause were violated because a state must apply uniform counting standards throughout the entire state. It cannot do a selective recount or do a recount of specific type of votes. The second decision, 5-4, was obviously more controversial. It ruled that there was not enough time for another statewide recount to meet the safe harbor deadline for electoral vote certification. The deadline for the Electoral College vote was approaching.

There is no evidence that Gore won FL.

There's the NORC study:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011201155014/http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/florida.ballots/stories/main.html (news report)
https://www.scribd.com/document/104548804/20040526-KeatingPaper (full paper)

If the manual recounts in-progress had completed (the ones requested by Gore and amended by the FL Supreme Court), Bush still would have won.  A statewide manual recount (never requested by Gore) would have given Gore a 0-200 vote win, depending on the standard used.

This qualifies as *some* evidence instead of *no* evidence :-) .