Serow #72 by Washington Post; Deadlock (p514)

• Bush and Gore fought longest and most expensive pres campaign in 2000.
• 36 day post election battle in Florida resulted in the Pres being determined by US SupCrt
• 90s proved Dems and Reps were at a parity in national politics
• Issues were big: how to educate America’s children, how to insure retirement security, how to sustain economic prosperity, how to define America’s role as a superpower
• More than 50 lawsuits, appeals to every possible court, news conferences, etc
• Bush’s strategy assumed that Gore’s chief weapon was the Florida Supreme Court
• Florida Gov. Bush moved to keep the largest law firms off Gore’s team
• Gore’s team mishandled issue of overseas absentee ballots
• Allowed the Bush team to demand hurried recounts and pad their lead.
• Voter News Service spends months preparing to count votes
• Exit polls overestimated the Gore vote and underestimated the Bush vote
• Miscalculated the number of absentee ballots
• During recounts it was required that 3 people review each ballot and decide who its intended vote was for
• Board managed to count about one ballot per minute
• Palm Beach barely met deadline for recounts and Miami-Dade County did not finish its recounts
• Because of exit polls taken by VNS and media people were not interested in finding out who won election but rather saw the recount as a political means to winning the presidency.
• FL exposed how fragile democracy is and
• Showed it depends on the faith of ordinary people that the system is fair and equitable
• Election identified several things that need to be changed in order to make the voting process better