"I will deliver Florida to my brother." - Jeb Bush, the day before the election

It was too close to call in both Florida. And it would take days to count the ballots of Oregonian voters since the election in that state was done through the mail. As the days passed, Gore was stuck at 260 electoral votes, while Bush had 246. Oregon was not a factor, because its 7 electoral votes could not bring either candidate to the magical number of 270 -- a majority. The election continued to hinge on Florida where its 25 electoral votes would determine the winner. With Oregon still uncounted, Gore held onto a slim 200,000-plus lead in the popular vote, 48,854,158 to 48,641,710.

An automatic recount also took place in New Mexico where Gore had a 6,825 lead according to the first tally. As a result, Gore's lead diminished to a razor-thin 119 votes. In Iowa, Republican officials explored the possibility of requesting a voter recount in a state that Bush lost by less than 5,000 votes. And in Wisconsin, where Bush lost by about 6,000 votes, there was no automatic recount. But a candidate may request one, and Bush officials considered that possibility.

More than 105 million Americans cast ballots in the presidential election. Bush eventually secured 271 electoral votes, just one above the magical number of 270. But he lost the nation's popular vote to Gore by 539,897 votes, according to a final vote tally compiled by a nonpartisan research group from state reports (Washington Post, December 21, 2000). Slightly more than half of 1 percent of the overall vote count separated them. Gore got 50,996,064 votes, or 48.39 percent; Bush drew 50,456,167 votes, or 47.88 percent; Green Party candidate Ralph Nader had 2,864,810, or 2.72 percent; Reform Party nominee Patrick Buchanan took 448,750, or 0.43 percent; and Harry Browne got 386,024, or 0.37 percent. The remaining 34 vote-getters, including 13th-ranked "None of the Above," each drew less than one-tenth of 1 percent.

Based on reports of total ballots cast in 34 states and the District, there was an estimated undercount of 2.1 million ballots nationally, the report said. The undercount includes those who did not vote for president but voted for other offices, and discarded ballots. Nationwide, voter turnout equaled 105,380,929 ballots cast, or 51.2 percent of those eligible, said Curtis Gans of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate in releasing the group's final figures. That figure was up 2.2 percentage points from 1996 but was significantly lower than the 62.8 percent who voted in 1960, making the 2000 election among those with the lowest turnouts, he said. Among 16 battleground states, turnout increased by an average of 3.4 percent, compared with a 1.6 percent increase in other states.

The head of Fox News's Election Night decision desk -- who recommended calling Florida, and the election, for Bush -- turned out to be his first cousin. According to the Washington Post(November 14, 2000), John Ellis -- whose Ellis mother, Nancy Ellis, is the sister of former president George Bush -- called his cousins "Jebbie," the governor of Florida, and the presidential candidate himself , giving them updated assessments of the vote count. The next day, Ellis said that "Jebbie'll be calling me like eight thousand times a day."

Ellis's projection was crucial because Fox News Channel put Florida in the Bush column at 2:16 a.m. -- followed by NBC, CBS, CNN, and ABC within four minutes. That decision, which turned out to be wrong and was retracted by the embarrassed networks less than two hours later, created the impression that Bush had "won" the White House.

Fox Vice President John Moody approved Ellis's recommendation to call Florida for Bush. "I don't think there's anything improper about it as long as he doesn't behave improperly, and I have no evidence he did. ... John has always conducted himself in an extremely professional manner." But Moody admitted that Ellis's Election Night conversations with the cousins "would cause concern."

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, said: "The notion that you'd have the cousin of one presidential candidate ... in a position to call a state is unthinkable. Fox's call precipitated all the other networks' calls. That call -- wrong, unnecessary, misguided, foolish -- has helped create a sense that this election went to Bush, was pulled back and he is waiting to be restored."

Nearly two months after the election, an internal investigation by Voter News Service (VNS), VNS created in 1990 as a cost-cutting measure by the major television networks and the Associated Press, concluded that its techniques were inherently risky for the networks that rely on its data. According to the Washington Post (December 22, 2000), the group had no reliable way of estimating the number of Florida's absentee ballots in the presidential race which were almost double what it had expected. Furthermore, the news service dramatically underestimated the number of Florida votes still uncounted at 2 a.m. "Budget limitations placed heavy burdens on all VNS staff and made the task of covering elections far more difficult than necessary," the report said.

While CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and Fox decided to project Gore and, six hours later, Bush the Florida winner -- and had to retract both calls in humiliating fashion -- those decisions were based heavily on bad VNS data. This was more than just a media embarrassment. The calling of Florida for Gore gave many viewers the impression, especially after the vice president won Michigan and Pennsylvania, that he was on his way to the White House, a situation Republicans say may have discouraged some Bush voters from turning out. The later projection that Bush had won Florida fostered a national mind-set that he had been elected president which Gore supporters said made their recount battle that much harder.

At 7:50 p.m. on election night when the network calls for Gore began, VNS was wildly underestimating the size of Florida's absentee vote. The group thought absentee ballots would make up 7.2 percent of the overall vote, instead of the actual figure of 12 percent. VNS also projected that absentees would vote 22.4 percent more for Bush than Election Day voters, when the actual figure was 23.7 percent. That mistake alone accounted for 1.3 percentage points of the 7.3 percent lead that Gore was projected to hold at that moment.

According to the Post, VNS was operating in the dark because the organization did no telephone polling in Florida to try to estimate the size and shape of the absentee vote, largely because of "the very considerable costs" involved. The group did such surveys in California, Oregon, and Washington because of the traditionally heavy absentee balloting in those states. The report said that "the absentee vote has been growing over the years, and we have had to deal with it in a patchwork method."

Another 2.8 percentage points of Gore's projected lead was inflated by problems with the exit polls, specifically the sampling of voters in the group's 45 selected precincts. The report says this degree of error was "within the normal range" for exit polls. The remaining 3.2 percentage points of the Gore lead were due to flaws in the exit poll "model" itself. One of VNS's key techniques was to compare its exit-poll findings to the results of past elections.

VNS said that it used Florida Governor Jeb Bush's 1998 victory as the best predictor of how his brother would fare this year, but that Robert Dole's 1996 bid -- more voters turn out in a presidential year -- would have produced a better estimate. There also "may be errors in the past vote file for the 1998 gubernatorial race," the report said. Finally, VNS used raw vote totals to help correct any exit-poll errors. At 7:50, the exit poll in Tampa was off by 16 percentage points, inflating Gore's estimated lead. But Tampa and Miami which had the biggest overstatement of Gore's lead in the exit polls, had not reported any votes at 7:50, leaving VNS unable to modify its errors.

If any one of these four mishaps had not occurred, the report said, VNS might not have called Florida for Gore. While some "bad luck" was involved, according to the report. Editorial director Murray Edelman said that the networks also bore responsibility for making projections without consulting VNS. He wrote, "It would appear that calls are being made at the minimum acceptable tolerances for risk, with very little allowance for error. If we are to continue in this manner, our decision procedures must be redesigned."

The network projections that Bush had won Florida, and with it the presidency, began at 2:16 a.m. They also were based on bad VNS numbers although neither the news service nor the AP declared Bush the winner. At 2:10, with 97 percent of the state's precincts reporting, VNS estimated that there were 179,713 votes outstanding. In fact, more than 359,000 votes came in after 2:10. In Palm Beach County alone, VNS projected there were 41,000 votes outstanding, but 129,000 votes came in. This was compounded by local problems with reporting the vote. At 2:08, Gore's total in Volusia County mysteriously dropped by more than 10,000 votes, while nearly 10,000 votes were added to Bush's total. This mistake boosted Bush's lead by 20,348 votes, giving him a 51,433-vote lead over Gore -- or so VNS believed.

Brevard County later increased Gore's total by 4,000, with none for Bush, in what appeared to be a correction of an earlier mistake. Given the tightness of the contest, Edelman wrote, "I was very concerned to see the race called by the networks." Among other problems, VNS's quality-control system was so inadequate that it failed to reject an early report that 95 percent of Duval County had voted for Gore.

FOCUSING ON FLORIDA. Weeks before the presidential election, Florida Republicans mailed party voters tens of thousands of requests for absentee ballots that were virtually completed, requiring only the applicant's signature and Social Security number. The materials were apparently distributed to an unknown number of Florida voters and did not require voters to give any reason for requesting an absentee ballot nor did it require voters to provide information required to properly confirm their identity.

The aim, according to the New York Times (November 14, 2000), was to drive up absentee voting for Bush. But significant problems emerged. Many of the forms provided by the Republicans lacked the voter registration number required by Florida's tough anti-fraud election laws.

According to WebSiteDaily, The campaign materials promoted the convenience of voting by mail and used a slogan of "Vote By Mail It's as easy as 1-2-3!" A removable form was attached to the flyers which could be signed and mailed or delivered to the county elections office to request an absentee ballot.

The state enacted laws that were especially stringent on the issuing of absentee ballots after widespread fraud in the 1997 mayoral election in Miami led to the removal of Mayor Xavier Suarez. The laws specify that ballots may not be issued unless prospective voters provide identifying information, including their voter identification numbers. But these requirements were disregarded in 2000 in thousands of cases around the state of Florida.

According to the New York Times, election officials in several counties said in interviews that they had supplied the missing number on the forms and sent out absentee ballots to voters. In Seminole County, Sandra Goard, the local election supervisor, refused to accept the applications without the registration number. But Goard allowed Republican workers to camp out in her offices for as long as 10 days to make handwritten corrections on the pre-printed applications sent out by the Republican Party.

A local lawyer in Seminole County, Harry Jacobs, formally protested Goard's decision to allow Republican campaign workers to correct the applications. "I felt like it was wrong," Jacobs said. "I felt it was not legal. I felt it was amoral." At a two-hour meeting today, the Seminole county election board rejected Jacob's complaint and certified the results, saying Goard had followed the election law. Republicans strongly disputed that contention and said the procedure in no way undermined the validity of the absentee voting process since it involved only applications, not the ballots themselves. "

A Florida Republican official said today that the party had mailed thousands of pre-prepared applications for absentee ballots to Republican voters around the state. He declined to say how many were sent or whether they were all missing the voter registration numbers, saying the information was "proprietary."

PALM BEACH COUNTY. In the early morning hours after Election Day, stories circulated that irregularities and possible illegalities had occurred, particularly in Palm Beach County. After all the votes had been tabulated, Bush hung onto a tenuous 1,784 lead over Gore across the state. In addition, on election night, Palm Beach county still had 515 absentee ballots of an estimated 2,000 outstanding, since Floridians living overseas had 10 days after the election to have their ballots arrive in the county where they requested a ballot. At the end of the day, the Palm Beach County mystery deepened when it was reported that over 19,000 ballots were nullified for having more than one hole punched for a presidential candidate.

Where Buchanan earned three-tenths of 1 percent of the votes Florida cast for president, he drew eight-tenths of a percent of the presidential vote in Palm Beach county. In heavily Democratic Palm Beach County, Buchanan received 3,407 of 431,836 votes. However, in the entire state of Florida, Buchanan received 17,372 of 5,955,919 votes. If Buchanan got the same percentage in Palm Beach as statewide, he should have gotten 1,260 votes. The vote for Buchanan was 350 percent higher than the next highest vote total for Buchanan in any Florida county. The next highest county vote was in Pinnellas County at 1,000. Yet, Palm Beach County was not Buchanan country. In fact, it was just the opposite.

It was inconceivable that liberal Palm Beach County, with its many Jewish voters, would turn out to be a Buchanan bastion. Buchanan was widely considered to harbor anti-Semitic sentiments, once praising Adolf Hitler as "an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier in the Great War, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him." He had also written admiringly of Nazi Germany's efforts to counter the Soviet threat. In 1992 the Anti-Defamation League charged that Buchanan had shown "a disregard or hostility toward those not like him and a consequent displeasure with the exercise of freedom by these others ... (a) displeasure expressed in a 30-year record of intolerance unmatched by any other mainstream political figure."

Even Buchanan said on NBC's "Today" (November 9, 2000) show that the disputed votes in the heavily Democratic district of Palm Beach County probably did not belong to him. The Reform Party nominee said, "I looked at it as closely as you folks have, but it does seem to me that those are probably not my vote in those precincts in Palm Beach county. My guess is I probably got some votes down there that really did not belong to me. ... I do not feel well about that. I don't want to take any votes that don't belong to me."

The only explanation offered was the layout of the county's confusing "butterfly" ballot. It led voters to punch the hole in their ballot next to Buchanan's name, thinking they were voting for Gore. Later realizing what had happened, many Palm Beach county voters became very angry, feeling that they were duped. Florida law specifies that voters mark an "X" in the blank space to the right of the name of the candidate for whom they wanted to vote. On the Palm Beach County presidential ballot, six candidates were listed on one page facing a listing of four candidates on another page. Buchanan's name was listed first on the right page, opposite and between Bush's and Gore's names. Although Gore's name was listed second on the first page, voters had to punch the third whole in a middle column to cast a ballot for Gore. Lawyer Jeff Liggio, a lawyer for Palm Beach county Democrats, called the ballot "illegal," since Florida law specifically states that Gore's name had to be second on the ballot. Reading down the names read Bush, Buchanan, and then Gore was listed third.

It would be incredible to believe that more than 3,000 elderly Jews would intentionally vote for Buchanan, when every piece of anecdotal and statistical evidence clearly indicated that they intended their votes to go for Gore. Even Buchanan was tacit in saying that it was "ridiculous" for one to believe that he had received that many votes.

Bay Buchanan, who ran her brother's campaign, suggested that voters were confused by a butterfly ballot and punched the hole for Buchanan when they meant to vote for Gore. She said that it was "ridiculous" to believe that so many voters would have picked the Reform Party in an area where they had not campaigned. She said that she was startled to hear Bush strategist Karl Rove argue that Buchanan had strong support in a county where his campaign never bought an ad and never paid a visit. Quoted in the Los Angeles Times (November 10, 2000), Bay said, "The vote there basically represents 20 percent of the votes we got in the entire state and it's not our natural base. We only got 5 percent of our state vote there in the 1996 Republican primary."

She also pointed out that even in Tampa and the northern Panhandle, where they spent time and money, her brother got only about 1,000 to 1,200 votes. While Buchanan only garnered 8,788 votes in the 1996 Republican primary in Palm Beach County, that vote came not long after Buchanan reached what has proved to be the high point of his political career with a victory over Dole in the New Hampshire primary. And that vote count, Bay pointed out, represented about 5 percent of their vote total in the state and in keeping with turnout in other counties.

Seventy-six year old Stanley Haber of Boca Raton told the Associated Press (November 8, 2000), "I think I voted mistakenly for Buchanan because his dot appeared between Bush's and Gore's. I think there should be a totally new vote." Eileen Klasfeld said, "It was so hard to tell who and what you were voting for. I couldn't figure it out, and I have a doctorate." Boca Raton resident Blake Smith incorrectly punched his ballot and had to ask for a second card. He said, "When I went to push the one for president, I pushed one and it seemed to be just below the office of vice president. It seemed like I had to push one for vice president, too. Then I saw I had accidentally voted twice."

Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore reported that her office received calls about the problem all day. Meanwhile, outside the Palm Beach elections office, about 50 outraged citizens carried signs protesting the ballots. "It was an injustice. Thousands of people were confused," said Niso Mama. "We have to have another election in this county."

County officials voided 19,120 ballots before they were counted because they were double- punched. Only 3,783 voters made that mistake on the United States Senate portion of the ballot, the Associated Press reported.

Republicans pointed out that there were 14,872 disqualified ballots in Palm Beach County in 1996, claiming that it undermined the Democrats' complaints that the ballot disqualifications in 2000 were extraordinary. Florida Democratic Congressman told Salon (November 112, 2000), "That's a lie." He said that punch-card ballots are most often discarded for two reasons: when voters select too many candidates per contest ("overvote") or no candidate at all ("undervote").

Bob Naegele of the Federal Elections Commission said that "overvoters" are usually confused. They think that they have to vote for both president and vice president and punch two holes in one category, or are perhaps just new to the punch-card voting process. He said that roughly one ballot per thousand, or .10 percent, is discarded for that reason. "Undervoting," on the other hand, occurs on a lengthy ballot when voters simply do not bother to fill in every category. When ballots are "discarded" for either reason, they are done so only for that particular race. If someone "overvotes" for president, or does not vote at all, his or her legitimate vote for senator still counts.

The 19,000 disputed ballots in Palm Beach county included "overvotes" only. An additional 10,000 ballots were put aside by county officials for "undervoting," bringing the total to nearly 30,000 discarded ballots in all. The 14,000 Palm Beach county ballots that were voided in 1996, Deutsch told Salon, included both "overvoting" and "undervoting." In other words, there were twice as many ballots voided in 2000 in Palm Beach County than four years earlier.

Naegele also said that not only was the 19,120 discarded ballots especially high, but that it was "very unusual" for there to be more "overvotes" than "undervotes," as there were in Palm Beach county in 2000. "You would not expect that. "Undervotes" are far more common." Dr. Chris Fastnow, a political scientist and director of the Center for Women in Politics in Pennsylvania at Chatham College, reasoned that if enough voters in Palm Beach County were confused and mistakenly voted for Buchanan, it should be statistically detectable by examining the vote for Buchanan relative to the votes for Gore and Bush for all of the counties in Florida. She concluded that the results seemed to suggest that something unique happened in Palm Beach county.

In order to get an estimate of the number of votes that Buchanan would have garnered in Palm Beach county, she ran three simple and straight-forward linear regressions: one predicting Buchanan's vote share based on Bush's votes in the other Florida counties, one predicting Buchanan's votes based on Gore's votes, and another using the total votes cast.

Fastnow concluded that there were theoretical reasons to think that the number Buchanan's votes should correlate with Bush's. First, for any candidate, a large county with many people will generally provide the candidate more votes than a county with fewer people, all else being equal. Second, holding size of the county constant, a more conservative county should favor both Buchanan and Bush. Thus, it seemed reasonable to expect a systematic relationship between the two candidates' votes.

Fastnow scrutinized Buchanan's vote versus the total votes cast in each county. If each county were ideologically similar to one another, the percentage of votes that Buchanan got would be roughly the same in each county, which would produce a straight line when Buchanan's votes were plotted against the total votes. If size of the county were correlated with the ideology of the county, one might expect the line to curve some, since urban counties might be expected to be more liberal. Most of the vote shares for Buchanan fell close to this line. If Palm Beach County were like the other counties, according to estimates (using Bush's votes), Buchanan would have gotten around 600 votes in that county instead of the 3407 votes he actually got. If one used Gore's votes to predict Buchanan's vote, one would have predicted Buchanan to get somewhere around 792 votes. If one accepts Fastnow's statistical assumptions, then it can be claimed with a fairly high degree of statistical confidence that the irregularities in Palm Beach county cost Gore a significant share of votes.

MORE VOTING IRREGULARITIES. Dozens, and possibly hundreds, of voters in Broward County were unable to vote because the Supervisor of Elections did not have enough staff to verify changes of address. According to tompaine.com (November 9, 2000), CBS's Dan Rather reported a possible computer error in Volusia County where James Harris, an obscure Socialist Workers Party candidate, won 9,888 votes. He won 583 in the rest of the state. State Democratic Party officials raised concerns that a computer error may have caused the outsized ballot for Harris In other counties, Harris received 0, 1, or 2 votes.

The Palm Beach Post (November 16, 2000) reported that the company hired by the state to compile that list of names made a massive mistake and misidentified thousands of people. In response to a barrage of complaints from irate voters, nearly 8,000 of those who had received the notices were subsequently reinstated on the eligible voter lists in time for yesterday's vote. A computer error by a Boca Raton company that has a $4 million contract with the state Division of Elections mistakenly singled out thousands of Floridians -- including 472 in Palm Beach County and 185 from the Treasure Coast -- as felons in Texas and a few other states. No Floridian convicted of a felony can vote unless his voting rights are restored by the Office of Executive Clemency. The Palm Beach Post reported that initially, "11,986 people were tagged with out-of- state felony convictions. But after the mishap was realized, following angry complaints from people erroneously identified as muggers, burglars and car thieves, 7,972 people were removed from that list."

According to Reuters news service (November 8, 2000), many voters received pencils rather than pens when they voted, in violation of state law. The Miami Herald (November 10, 2000) reported that many Haitian-American voters were turned away from precincts where they were voting for the first time.

The Orlando Sentinel (November 9, 2000) reported that the Volusia County elections office was locked and put under guard until the county's canvassing board could meet to recount ballots. One of the reasons given for the lockdown was an incident early in the post-election day morning in which an elections office was spotted leaving with two bags. The employee later was stopped and searched by deputies who suspected the bags might contain ballots. Deputies turned up only personal items and a single blank sample ballot but said that it was one of the reasons why the elections office locked down the office.

More complications occurred overseas, as Florida awaited the return of absentee ballots. A civilian Department of Defense employee told Salon (November 10, 2000) that at least five Florida residents serving at a American Air Force base in England received two absentee ballots. Elaine Gatley, a civil service executive secretary stationed at RAF Mildenhall in southeastern England, said that she and four fellow Floridians who work in her office received two ballots in the mail from the state of Florida. But she said that at least three of her fellow Floridians, all of whom were registered Republican, told her that they filled out and returned the second ballots as well. The duplicate ballots were mailed from election offices in at least three Florida counties -- Santa Rosa, Osceola, and Hillsborough -- according to Gatley. The multiple ballots were sent to registered Democrats, as well as Republicans, she said. One of Gatley's Republican co-workers at the Air Force base confirmed to Salon that she had received two ballots from Florida.

Democratic Party officials also alleged that voters were intimidated and misinformed before entering voting booths in states including Missouri, Michigan, Iowa, and Kansas. According to ABC News (November 8, 2000), Democratic officials relayed reports from Iowa of senior citizens receiving telephone calls telling them they could not vote unless specifically registered for the election.

On CNN's "Burden of Proof" (November 8, 2000), a caller said an elections supervisor in his Missouri precinct handed him Christian Coalition campaign material with his ballot and told him, "God wants you to vote for George W. Bush." When the voter said he thought the supervisor's actions were illegal, she told him that the Christian Coalition wanted her to educate the voters in this way. The voter reported the supervisor to the police. In West Virginia, according to ABC News, voters received calls from a Republican phone bank in California falsely telling them Senator Robert Byrd of their state had not endorsed Gore.

Other irregularities occurred across the country. According to the Associated Press, telephone calls were made to some residents of Kansas, giving false information about the state's election laws. Democrats had reported getting recorded messages the night before the election, incorrectly telling them they must bring voter registration cards to polling places to be allowed to cast a ballot. The campaign of Representative Dennis Moore, a Democrat seeking re-election in the 3rd Congressional District, contacted the FBI about the phone calls. Moore's office played the message for the AP: "Failure to comply with election law is serious business, so make sure you have your card and do it right."

Meanwhile, Democrats in various states Tuesday night tried unsuccessfully to get polls to stay open later to accommodate long lines of voters. But in St. Louis, just an hour before polls were set to close, a judge ordered them to stay open three hours past their closing time -- until 10 p.m. local time -- to accommodate the heavy turnout. Democrats who sought the extension cited long lines and a shortage of booths, ballots, judges, and other equipment. According to AP, Judge Evelyn M. Baker said the Board of Election Commissioners "failed to live up to its duty to the voters of the city." However, 45 minutes after the ruling, a three-judge panel in the Missouri Court of Appeals overturned Baker's decision and ordered the polls closed at once. Similar filings to keep polls open were denied in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Portland, Maine, and Detroit, Michigan.

While the nation focused on the Florida count, the winner of the New Mexico vote still was uncertain. Originally, New Mexico's five electoral votes were given to Gore who had a lead of 6,825 votes. However, as many as 370 additional special absentee ballots remained to be counted. However, the ultimate winner was unimportant, since the president-elect hinged upon the winner in Florida which had 25 electoral votes.

As the recount began, Bush pecked away at Gore's lead of 5,000 votes. But his margin quickly vanished after an automatic recount was ordered, since the vice president's lead was less than one-half of one percent. By the weekend, the recount showed that Bush had taken an incredible state-wide lead of four votes.

Gore remained the apparent winner for three days. Then other problems began to develop. The major problem area was Bernalillo County with one-third of New Mexico's registered voters. The election count was plagued by computer-programming blunders and a series of missteps. First, a programming glitch left 67,000 ballots uncounted on election day. Second, a box full of 257 uncounted ballots went missing. They later turned up in a locked ballot box -- in the same voting machine storage warehouse where the counting was taking place. No sooner had the errant ballots been found, however, than the disposition of another batch of ballots was announced: County election officials decided that 355 ballots that had been thrown out because a voting machine rejected them would be counted after all. Third, a number of "in lieu" ballots also were to be dealt with. These ballots, sometimes called provisional or emergency ballots, had been cast on election day by voters who had requested absentee ballots but did not receive them. Voters were allowed to vote after signing an affidavit attesting that they had not already voted absentee.

To add to the general distress, the county election Web site was hacked by someone who left the name "Prime Suspectz." However, officials said that the hacker did not tamper with the election figures.

TOO CLOSE TO CALL. In Oregon, the race may be headed for a recount. Gore was ahead by 6,092 votes a week after Election Day. State law requires a recount if the margin is less than one-fifth of 1 percent, or about 2,800 votes. This was the closest presidential race in Oregon since 1976 when Gerald Ford edged Jimmy Carter by 1,713 votes in a recount. Nine days after the election, it was announced that Gore received the state's seven electoral votes. In Iowa, Republican officials were exploring the possibility of requesting a voter recount in a state that Bush lost by less than 5,000 votes. The campaign announced nine days after the election that it would not ill not seek a recount in Iowa, conceding that state's seven electoral votes to Gore. And in Wisconsin, where Bush lost by about 6,000 votes, there was no automatic recount. Nevertheless, the Bush camp did not seek a retally.

THE BATTLE FOR 25 ELECTORAL VOTES BEGINS. In the early morning hours of November 8, the media projected a Bush victory. Gore called the Texas governor to concede the election. But then the media retracted its statement and called the election too close to call. Accordingly, Gore made a second call to Bush. Quoted in the Washington Post(November 10, 2000), Gore told him, "Circumstances have changed dramatically since I first called you," according to aides to both men who heard each side of the conversation. "The state of Florida is too close to call," Gore said. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?" Bush asked brusquely and disbelievingly. "Let me make sure that I understand. You're calling back to retract that concession?" "Don't get snippy about it!" Gore spat back. "Let me explain," he continued. If Bush prevailed in the final count, Gore would immediately offer the Texas governor his "full support. But I don't think we should be going out making statements with the state of Florida still in the balance."

Several events quickly unfolded throughout November 9. According to Florida law, a recount is mandated if the margin of a victory is less than one-half of one percent. Explaining the delay, Gore addressed the nation and explained the legal process which had to be completed before a president-elect could be announced.

Gore's lawyers swung into action only 36 hours after Election Day, asserting that irregularities such as the "butterfly" ballot were illegal under state law and asking for a revote in Palm Beach County. Both campaigns sent skilled attorneys, former secretaries of state Warren Christopher and Jim Baker, to duel in Florida over the fate of the presidency. Once Gore chose Christopher to do political battle, the Bush camp was compelled to appoint a high-powered representative. Once choice could have been another former secretary of state, George Shultz. He had been much more involved in the Bush campaign than had Baker; but Shultz was not a lawyer and did not have Baker's fighter's instinct. "Their differences are on the surface," a diplomat who worked closely with both men said in the Washington Post (November 11, 2000). "Christopher has a North Dakota dourness while Baker is all Texas good ol' boy. But they have a lot more in common than that, including the fact each pays tremendous attention to detail. Nothing will get by them."

If Bush's marginal lead along with these other irregularities were not enough, officials in Volusia County discovered three unsealed ballot bags, one with the paper votes actually spilling out while moving the ballots to another building to get ready for a full hand count. Unofficial results in Volusia showed Gore with 97,063 votes and Bush with 82,214.

Heavily Republican Seminole County was the last to finish its mandatory recount. The margin was down to about 229 and Seminole County votes added another 98 net votes to Bush. The reason for Seminole county's delay is that they voluntarily provided the complete recount, including rejected ballots, sought in Palm Beach. A member of the Seminole county election board and local Republican congressman John Mica were running each individual ballot through the voting machines. Any ballot the machine rejected was then examined by hand to see if they could determine the "will of the voter." If they could make a accurate judgment, they prepared a new ballot to replace the original one and added the newly created ballot to the count.

During the official recount, Gore began to slowly peck away at Bush's 1,784 vote margin. When all the votes were recounted, Bush held onto a 327 vote lead -- out of nearly 6 million votes cast. But the nation still had to wait for November 17, the deadline to receive absentee ballots.

More than two weeks after Election Day, new accusations in Seminole County of voting irregularities emerged. According to the Orlando Sentinel (November 23, 2000), there were charges that double voting by people who submitted absentee ballots. Attorneys battled to throw out all 15,000 of the county's absentee ballots.

Gerald Richman, an attorney challenging presidential returns, said it was possible that some people voted twice -- once by absentee and a second time on Election Day. He said that a statistical analysis of returns from Precinct 28 in Longwood was "grossly" abnormal. After the Seminole County Canvassing Board finished recounting ballots countywide, Bush made a net gain of 98 votes. Precinct 28 accounted for 88 of them. "I think it means there were improprieties or double voting or something else," Richman said.

The new allegations emerged after Sandy Goard, supervisor of elections, gave a sworn statement to attorneys, explaining that poll workers had a roster of registered voters, and it showed each person who had already voted absentee. She maintained that there was no evidence anyone tried to vote a second time. Longwood Democrat Harry Jacobs brought a lawsuit against Goard, accusing her of colluding with the GOP in a get-out-the-vote campaign.

THE BUSH CAMPAIGN GOES TO COURT. The Bush campaign's strategy was to send a clear message not only to Gore but to the American public that continued wrangling by the Democrats could trigger an ugly battle over disputed votes in many states. Their hope was to build public pressure on the Gore campaign to drop its challenges in Florida once absentee ballots there are counted. Baker said in the New York Times (November 11, 2000) that the Republicans had acted "to preserve the integrity and the consistency and the equality and finality" of the close vote. Baker was quoted in the Los Angeles Times (November 11, 2000) as saying that the GOP could not be expected to "sit on their hands" if the Democrats continued challenging the Florida results. He added, "If we keep going down the path we're on, if we keep being put in the position of having to respond to recount after recount after recount of the same ballots, then we just can't sit on our hands and we will be forced to do what might be in our best personal interest. It would not be in the best interests of our wonderful country."

Even before the deadline for the legal process of receiving and counting the absentee ballots was over, Baker tried to convince Gore to concede the election by the 327 votes. Additionally, Baker as well as the entire Bush campaign ignored Florida law that allows for a manual count request within 72 hours of a reported vote count. They failed to allow this legal action run its course. On November 11 the Bush campaign responded by going to federal court, determined to block Democratic requests for hand recounts of votes. The Bush campaign requested a federal injunction from the United States District Court of Florida against continuing the ongoing manual vote count in two Florida districts, Palm Beach and Volusia, against the planned manual vote count in Broward County, against the scheduled consideration of a manual vote count in Dade county, and against any future manual counts in any of the other counties in Florida.

Baker claimed that there are no standards to determine how the will of the voter is to be seen in cases of "chads" and double-votes. Baker also declared in Salon (November 11, 2000) that a hand count, was "less fair and less accurate," and is vulnerable to "human error, individual subjectivity" and decisions to "determine the voter's intent."

Meanwhile, Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Kroll granted a temporary preliminary injunction in favor of two women who alleged that they voted incorrectly because of confusing ballots. Kroll's injunction prevented state and county officials from certifying as final the result of the presidential election. The judge's decision was based upon violations of Florida state laws concerning the format of election ballots, the injunction said, and it said the ballot was confusing and "printed in such a way that Plaintiffs were deprived of their right to freely express their will."

Baker implied in the New York Times (November 11, 2000) that if Gore did not concede the election, Bush could retaliate by beginning formal challenges to pro-Gore vote counts in states such as Wisconsin and New Mexico, and that would lead to a national crisis. In fact, Baker as well as Florida Republicans questioned the recounts in two counties where Gore saw his tallies increase by several hundred votes.

Finally, on November 11 the Bush campaign decided to take the legal action to try to block the manual recount, seeking a court order today to block it. The GOP lawsuit was filed in United States District Court in Fort Lauderdale on behalf of Bush and Cheney as well as seven Floridians who said that they voted for Bush and believed that the recounts would injure their voting rights. The Republicans filed suit just as the first hand counts were to have begun in Volusia County where workers were about to begin manually tallying the 184,018 ballots cast there. But a delay in counting write-in ballots postponed the hand count, raising doubts about whether the procedure could be completed by the state's deadline of November 14. Baker also threatened to ask for recounts in Iowa and Wisconsin which Gore won narrowly, if the Democrats continued to press for recounts in Florida.

The Florida suit said that the First Amendment rights of the voters would be deprived through a manual count, and their equal-protection rights under the 14th Amendment would also be infringed, because different counties may use different methods for interpreting the ballots. The suit also said that a temporary restraining order must stop the hand counts before they are finished, because once the "tainted results" were broadcast to the nation, an irreparable harm will occur to the presidential transition. They believed that the recounts would raise questions about the tallying process in other counties or states, interfering in the "powerful national interest in the finality of the selection of the president."

Historically, the GOP has turned to the states and the Democrats to the federal government to solve issues. However, in this battle the Bush campaign asked the federal government to make the decision to halt the hand recount. Susannah Sherry of Vanderbilt University Law School commented on this irony, stating in the New York Times (November 13, 2000), "Anyone who usually takes the states' rights side on the ground that the states are trustworthy partners of the national government should not be questioning the trustworthiness of state law, state elections, or state judges." She asked if Bush, if president, would "appoint Supreme Court justices who will continue to uphold states' rights claims against federal authority and federal legislation, given his newly found mistrust of the states?"

In an interview at the Bush ranch, the governor was unable to explain the specifics of his federal injunction. Instead, he said that reporters should ask Baker. He then deferred to Cheney who spoke longer about nothing than Bush did. Bush tried to remain publicly placid throughout the chaos, but he let his irritation show when he spoke to reporters at his Crawford ranch. One of his dogs began yapping and Bush scolded her. Quoted in the Washington Post (November 12, 2000), Bush said, "Hey, hey, hey, hey--please. It's not your turn." And turning to reporters, he said, "Sorry -- the dog wanted to have a few comments. What she says was, ‘Let's finish the recount.' "

By filing the lawsuit to block the hand count, Bush showed that he did not trust the people. Ironically, he had spent much of the 2000 campaign telling the people that he trusted them while Gore trusted the federal government. Yet, he did exactly the opposite, calling upon the federal government to void the hand counted votes of the people. The core of Bush's law suit against the state of Florida was that a machine count of the votes was more accurate than a hand count, and a hand count would simply introduce inaccuracies into the counting process.

One principle to which everyone should subscribe is that Florida officials should do everything possible to count accurately every decipherable vote cast in the election. This is a case where, literally, every vote matters. Yet the Bush campaign threatened yesterday to block such an effort. Baker indicated in the Washington Post (November 12, 2000) that he would "vigorously oppose" further counting, meaning the Gore campaign's proposal that there be hand counts of the ballots in selected counties. According to Baker, there was a count and a recount, both by machine, and that should be enough. He accused the Gore campaign of seeking "to keep recounting, over and over, until it happens to like the result," and lectured instead, only three days after the election, that there has to be "some finality to the election process."

Yet in 1998, Bush signed a bill into law that did just the opposite, affirming that a hand count is more accurate than a machine count. The law reads in part, "(d) If different counting methods are chosen under Section 214.042(a) among multiple requests for a recount of electronic voting system results, only one method may be used in the recount. A manual recount shall be conducted in preference to an electronic recount and an electronic recount using a corrected program shall be conducted in preference to an electronic recount.

Republicans vowed to press their claim that selective counts would be a violation of the constitutional guarantee to equal protection of the law, and refused to rule out seeking recounts in Republican-dominated Florida counties and in other states where Gore's advantage is slim. Baker, quoted in the New York Times (November 13, 2000), called the stalemate "a black mark on our democracy and our process." He said that the Republicans would drop their request for an injunction to block the hand recounts if the Democrats would stop the recounts and agree to abide by the initial mandatory state-wide automated recount, plus the overseas absentee ballots. Speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press," (November 12, 2000), Baker said, "Whoever wins then, wins. We will accept that result. Speaking on the CBS News program "Face the Nation," (November 12, 2000), he added that there were "no uniform standards, no objective standards, simply no standards to guide these elected officials" in the hand recounts, which he said would be subject to error or mischief.

The Bush campaign's decision to bring litigation was a strategic effort to take the politically volatile case out of Florida -- and possibly the hands of local elected judges -- as quickly as possible. Federal courts are generally more reluctant than state courts to overturn election results declared by state officials. On the one hand, some political experts said in the New York Times(November 12, 2000) that Bush's advisers may have concluded that federal judges would consider the repeated recounts in Florida as another way of overturning the officially announced election results. But other experts thought the decision to bring a lawsuit was a gamble and that federal courts, and ultimately the United States Supreme Court, might be more willing to consider an unusual claim that recounts should be halted for the stability of the national political system.

As expected, District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks tossed out the GOP's lawsuit and allowed the recount to continue in the four counties. Then Gore made his first public comments since the day after the election, telling reporters that more was at stake than merely winning the presidency. He said, "What is at stake is our democracy; making sure the will of the American people is expressed and accurately received. That is why I have believed from the start while time is important it is even more important every vote is counted, and counted accurately. There is something very special about our process that depends totally on the American people having a chance to express their will." Gore added, "Look, I would not want to win the presidency by a few votes cast in error, or misinterpreted or not counted. I don't think Governor Bush wants that either."

On November 13 election officials in Broward County voted not to proceed with a full recount after a count of sample precincts found a gain of just four votes for Gore. That left three remaining counties with incomplete hand recounts: Palm Beach, Volusia, and Dade.

The following day, exactly one week after the election, Circuit Court Judge Terry P. Lewis of Leon County ruled that the counties had to adhere to a 5 p.m. deadline of that very day to report their results. Florida laws states that the secretary of state must turn in the results of the election state-wide. The law also states that she may -- not will -- validate the election in favor of one candidate. Harris, a Republican and Bush supporter, had insisted that deadline was hard and fast, and that she would not consider vote tallies coming in later.

The Gore campaign joined the lawsuit by Volusia and Palm Beach counties challenging the deadline. Judge Lewis ordered Harris not to dismiss late filings out of hand, saying she should use a "proper exercise of discretion" and take into account "all appropriate facts and circumstances" in considering them, according to the New York Times (November 15, 2000). The judge's decision to some degree split the difference in the case. It also left the Democrats wondering whether to join an appeal of the decision which was filed by Volusia and Palm Beach.

Meanwhile, the two counties of Palm Beach and Volusia, both Democratic strongholds where Gore was ahead in the vote, told Judge Lewis that the Florida secretary of state was arbitrarily imposing a deadline. Palm Beach County suspended its manual recount amid conflicting word from state authorities on whether it was acting properly. The elections board in Palm Beach county voted to do so 2-1, a crucial decision for the Gore camp because more than 400,000 votes had been cast in the heavily Democratic county. After Judge Lewis' ruling, election officials in the county certified the results of a machine recount and a partial manual recount, but told the Florida secretary of state that they planned to amend their results by conducting a hand recount. Volusia County submitted the results of their manual recount for certification. And Miami-Dade elections officials voted to begin a hand-count of nearly 6,000 ballots in three precincts, as the Gore camp had requested.

The Florida Division of Elections, which fell under Harris' authority, advised that no legal grounds existed for a recount by hand, because there was nothing wrong with the vote tabulation in the original tally. However, County Judge Charles Burton, chief executive of Palm Beach County and a member of the elections board there, said that the board had an obligation to follow the law. Then Florida's attorney general, Bob Butterworth, a Democrat, promptly challenged the interpretation of Harris' office as "erroneous," and said the county was entitled to push ahead.

PALM BEACH COUNTY'S "BUTTERFLY" BALLOT. In earlier and partial recounts, the board counted any vote where any corner of a chad was punched. Now, two or three corners of the chad must be punched for the vote to count. If a chad is "dimpled" -- indented but not punched out -- it is reviewed by the canvassing board. Unable to determine a voter's intent, county officials tossed out hundreds of ballots marked with a pinprick, bump, or indentation despite a judge's order to use less strict standards when reviewing disputed ballots.

After canceling the hand recount on November 15, Palm Beach County officials voted to resume the tedious process in the wake of the State Supreme Court's ruling. The Dade County Canvassing Board, which had voted for a hand recount, then terminated the process after Harris stated that their results would not be counted. But after the State Supreme Court allowed the hand tally to proceed, county officials voted again to begin another tally on November 19.

Circuit Court Judge Jorge LaBarga declined to order a new vote in Palm Beach County, where a "butterfly ballot" confused some voters. According to the New York Times (November 21, 2000), Judge LaBarga's order read: "The plaintiffs in this action cite no case law authority in the history of our nation, nor can the Court find any, where a revote or new election was permitted in a Presidential race." In his 17-page ruling, the judge concluded that he had no authority to order a new election for president. While legal precedent for ordering new elections is "legion" in other races, Judge Labarga wrote that none of those cases addressed the country's only national election -- for the presidency. He added that voters who argue that they were disenfranchised by the county election "cite no case law authority in the history of our nation, nor can the court find any, where a revote or new election was permitted in a presidential race."

Gore's attorneys also asked Judge LaBarga to force the Palm Beach County elections board to use a broader definition of a valid ballot. Lawyers claimed that the counties' ongoing hand count of ballots excluded too many voters. Judge LaBarga refused to mandate that "dimpled" chads be counted, leaving it up to canvassing board officials to decide. In a severe blow to the Gore campaign, the three-member Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, composed of all Democrats, ruled that those ballots be discarded.

On December the State Supreme Court upheld a lower court's refusal to order a new presidential election in Palm Beach County, ruling unanimously that its butterfly ballot conformed with state law.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL SCENARIOS. With neither candidate at the magic number of 270 electoral votes, Gore still had a chance, even if he failed to win on the recount. As improbably as it was, he knew that he could be elected if the fight over Florida was not resolved by December 18 when members of the Electoral College were to meet in the states and the Washington D.C. to cast their votes. The 12th Amendment to the Constitution specifically provides that an incomplete Electoral College can produce a valid presidential selection, saying that a candidate needs "a majority of the whole number of electors appointed" to be elected president. Without Florida's 25 votes, that whole number would be 513, and it would take 257 votes -- five fewer than Gore's current total -- to win.

Florida law prevents the state's exclusion from the electoral vote. Section 2 of Title 3 of the United States Code says that "whenever any state ... has failed to make a choice" of electors on Election Day, then the legislature can settle the issue itself "in such a manner" as it chooses. Michael Glennon of the University of California at Davis Law School explained in the Washington Post (November 11, 2000) that in Florida the options would include simply enacting a law decreeing that the electors should go to whoever wins the current recount, holding a new election, or even designating a slate of electors outright. If the Republican-controlled legislature appointed a slate of electors committed to Bush, they would be seen as blatantly partisan. Thus, in terms of the legitimacy of a Bush presidency, such a dispensation might hurt him more than it would help him. And any other solution, including a new election, would pose the risk that Bush would lose the state -- or that the second vote, too, would be contested indefinitely. Therefore, Florida would still miss the Electoral College vote.

A joint session of Congress in January to count the votes of the Electoral College might not provide a winner with a majority vote. Then the House of Representatives would elect the president. The Constitution calls for the presidential election to be taken up by the House. In theory, if Florida were excluded from the Electoral College vote -- or if there were continuing controversy over Florida's presidential choice -- senators and House members could challenge and possibly invalidate the electoral votes, thus throwing the election into the House. Such challenges could only succeed if a majority in each chamber agrees.

In the House, the vote for president would be by state delegation, with each delegation casting a single vote. Based on the 2000 election, Republicans had the 26 state delegations needed to win a majority in selecting a new president.

But the Senate's selection of a vice president -- Lieberman or Cheney -- was still unclear. First, the GOP held on to a 50-49 lead, with the Washington state race between Republican Senator Slade Gorton and Democratic challenger Maria Cantwell undecided. If Cantwell were to win and if the Republicans were to challenge Gore's electors in a straight party-line vote, they would presumably have to try to bar Cantwell from taking office. The Constitution gives each house of Congress full discretion in deciding whether or not to seat senators-elect from the various states, and representatives-elect and senators-elect have been refused admission in the past. Second, the status of Lieberman, who was reelected in Connecticut, and Gore himself, presiding as vice president, was in doubt. Would they be willing or be permitted to vote on a matter directly affecting them?

THE GORE CAMP RESPONDS. One of Gore's enemies was the time factor. Each day that elapsed became crucial, as he could risk not only his future but his party's as well. He alone would have to decide whether to proceed with legal action if the final count in Florida certified Bush as the winner on November 17, the deadline for all absentee ballots. The Gore campaign deeply believed that he trailed in the state only because thousands of voters in Democratic-leaning Palm Beach County erroneously cast ballots for Buchanan, or they double- punched their ballot and were disqualified. If Gore joined the lawsuits that Palm Beach residents had already filed to overturn the result, Gore risked appearing as though he was refusing to accept the voters' will -- an image that some Democrats already said could hurt the party in the 2002 election.

The Democratic leadership urged Gore to be careful as to how long he would pursue the battle. House minority leader Gephardt said in the Los Angeles Times (November 13, 2000), "When all of the hand recounts are finished, then whoever is the loser should give in and recognize the other party." Senate minority leader Daschle spoke on CBS' "Face the Nation:" We have got to count the absentee ballots. We have got to count those that have either been miscounted or not counted. But I think that we really ought to be very cautious and very, very concerned about taking this matter to the courts."

The Gore campaign reacted angrily to the Bush campaign's lawsuit. But Gore advisers were delighted to have forced the Republicans to be the first campaign to file a lawsuit, and they immediately seized on the opportunity to turn the tables on the Bush officials and accuse them of using delaying tactics. Christopher called on Bush to withdraw what he called the "surprising action" and to allow a full recount of the Florida votes. Quoted in the New York Times(November 12, 2000), Christopher said, "If Governor Bush truly believes that he has won the election in Florida, he should not have any reason to doubt or to fear to have the machine count checked by a hand count. This procedure is authorized under Florida law, under Texas law, and under the law of many other jurisdictions." Christopher also said that it was a common procedure that is often used around the country when a machine fails to fully read a ballot, and noted that Bush recently signed a law in Texas authorizing hand counts in disputed ballot situations.

Christopher, said that the manual recounts were proper under Florida law. He added that he believed the issue could be resolved in "a matter of days -- not weeks, not months," according to the New York Times (November 13, 2000).

Gore spokesman Lehane quickly accused the Bush campaign of trying "to use every legal means available, including lawyers and court injunctions, to block the speedy and accurate count of Florida votes. We are confident that Americans will reject Mr. Bush's arrogant stance and will demand a full, fair and accurate counting of Florida's votes."

The decision to be the first campaign to seek court relief represented a calculated risk for the Republicans. But the risk to the campaign of a manual count was clearly seen as greater than the perception that both sides were reduced to legal squabbling. A hand count of ballots in counties where Gore did well had the effect of raising the turnout, because some ballots that were rejected by machine will most likely be added to the total vote. The Gore campaign believed that a majority of those new votes would probably be for Gore.

SECRETARY OF STATE KATHERINE HARRIS . Katherine Harris served as co- chairperson of the Florida Bush Election Committee and a Bush elector in the Electoral College. She had been a Bush delegate to the Republican Convention, and she had actively campaigned for him in New Hampshire. She had said that she was "passionately interested" in a federal position in a Bush administration and was a key Bush fund-raiser in the state of Florida.

After one term in the Florida State Senate, Harris was elected secretary of state in 1998, defeating the Republican incumbent in the primary election. The incumbent, Sandra Mortham, had intended to be Jeb Bush's running mate in the governor's race that year, but she dropped off his ticket after questions arose about her handling of the office. According to Alan Judd of theAtlanta-Journal Constitution (November 17, 2000), that same year federal authorities disclosed that Harris had accepted $20,600 in illegal campaign contributions for her 1994 legislative campaign. The money came in dozens of checks purportedly from individual donations but actually provided by a single donor, a Sarasota-based insurance company, according to court documents. When the company gave Harris a bundle of checks, prosecutors said, her campaign staff requested the company to provide different addresses for each purported donor to obscure the true source of the money. The company's founder pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws and served a five-month prison sentence. Harris denied any wrongdoing on her part, and she was not charged with a crime. According to the Associated Press (November 13, 2000), Harris "was forced to reimburse $20,000 after state investigators discovered that employees of Riscorp, Incorporated, an insurer, were improperly reimbursed for their contributions to her 1994 Senate campaign.

The multimillionaire granddaughter of a cattle and citrus magnate, Harris was elected secretary of state in 1998 after defeating the incumbent, Mortham, in the Republican primary. Mortham ran for her old office after being dropped as Bush's running mate when it emerged that her office spent money intended for a history museum for golf balls and other items with Mortham's name on them. Mortham described Harris' campaign against her in the Washington Post (November 16, 2000), claiming that she was as "very aggressive, much more aggressive than we had seen on the Florida scene."

During the winter of 2000, Harris traveled to New Hampshire to campaign for Bush in the state's primary. In the summer, she along with Jeb Bush was a delegate to the Republican convention. She recruited Norman Schwarzkopf to participate in a taxpayer-funded get-out-the- vote commercial just before the election.

The rising star in the Republican Party, according to the Washington Post (November 16, 2000), met privately throughout the turmoil with prominent Republicans. Harris turned to a law firm with ties to Governor Jeb Bush for legal advice, hiring the firm of Steel, Hector and Davis to serve as her special counsel, according to Jonathan Sjostrom, a lawyer at the firm who had been advising Harris on litigation issues. The firm also confirmed that it was working with Mac Stipanovich, a Republican operative who ran Bush's 1994 gubernatorial campaign and was a top adviser to Harris in her 1998 campaign. While the firm did not say which case Stipanovich was involved in, Sjostrom did not deny Stipanovich is helping the firm represent Harris.

While Governor Jeb Bush recused himself from any role having a direct bearing upon the Florida election process, Harris did not. Yet, she was in charge of the election process, presuming that she had the authority to decide which ballots get counted, how, and when. As Florida co-chair of the Bush campaign, Harris had an obvious and absolute conflict of interest. In her rulings, she simply adopted the Bush campaign position.

Florida Democrats made an issue of Harris' active support for Bush and cited every connection that she had with him and his brother as evidence that she could not administer state election law in a nonpartisan manner. Bob Poe, chairman of the Florida Democratic Party, said in the Washington Post (November 16, 2000), "It becomes clearer and clearer by every action she takes, every statement she makes, that she is still the co-chairman of the Bush campaign of Florida and not our secretary of state. It's my guess that she gets a substantial portion of her marching orders right out of Austin."

Well before this current electoral controversy, Common Cause Florida criticized Harris for being insensitive to the nonpartisan nature of her office by using a highly visible supporter of Bush in taxpayer-funded public service ads urging people to vote. Common Cause strongly urged that the controversy be moved out of the partisan playing field and resolved in a nonpartisan manner.

Appearing on "Rivera" (November 14, 2000), CNN lawyer Alan Dershowitz called Harris a "crook" because of her involvement in a 1994 campaign contribution scandal. The Associated Press (November 14, 2000) reported that the result was she was "forced" to return $20,000 in campaign contributions.

Section 101.151(8) of the Florida Constitution reads in part: "Not less than 60 days prior to a general election, the department of state shall mail to each supervisor of elections the format of the ballot to be used for the general election." Harris sent out the sample ballots with a cover memo from her assistant director, Edward Kast, according to the Washington Post (November 17, 2000). The letter to the supervisor of elections in Alachua County said, "Enclosed please find two copies" of the sample ballots. The memo was dated September 26, which would have been only 42 days before the election. Gore spokesman Doug Hattaway said, "If the secretary of state is going to impose deadlines on these counties, the least she can do is follow the deadlines imposed on her by law."

Florida's secretary of state and other Florida election officials exerted pressure on the state's counties to get their overseas ballot counts completed and into her office by midnight on Friday November 17 or the following morning. In a series of letters and e-mails, the secretary of state's office explained to county officials that these votes had to be turned in to be included in the full state certification. Florida law requires that overseas absentees postmarked Nov. 7 -- Election Day -- or signed and dated November 7 must be counted if they arrive before midnight Friday. However, Florida law also gives county election supervisors until November 24 -- another week - - to report those results to the secretary of state.

The process of tallying the absentee ballots was concluded on November 18. Bush's lead more than tripled, as his lead crept back up to 930 votes. The Bush camp was furious because of a large number of absentee ballots that were disqualified because of postmark disputes. Bush's communications director Hughes said in the New York Times (November 19, 2000) that Democrats were waging a "targeted effort" to throw out a third of the overseas absentee ballots, including those from military personnel. Hughes added, "No one who aspires to be commander in chief should seek to unfairly deny the votes of the men and women he would seek to command."

An Associated Press survey showed that while 2,203 overseas ballots were counted, 1,420 were discarded. Counties applied differing standards to the acceptance of the ballots, with some rejecting ballots -- particularly those from the military -- that had no postmarks, and others following the secretary of state's advice that they be accepted. Florida law requires postmarks on absentee ballots, but federal law says the military must mail the ballots of its personnel without postage.

Numerous ballots from military personnel were discarded because many were in the field or on ships that did not have the equipment to postmark the letters. The Bush campaign seized on this as an opportunity to bring the emotional issue of patriotism into the forefront. Generals Schwarzkopf and Powell played to the emotions of the public, charging that military personnel who have "fought for freedom" should have the opportunity to participate in a democratic election process. In the midst of the GOP's public relations offensive against the Gore campaign, Florida's Democratic attorney general recommended that all absentee ballots from military personnel be counted.

Bush's lawyers filed suit to force the court to review the military ballots which had been invalidated because of no postmarks. Soon thereafter, they dropped the litigation, and then on November 25, a day before certification by the secretary of state, Bush's lawyers filed suits in five counties. As Gore ate into the extremely narrow Bush lead in other recounts, lawyers filed suits with court clerks in Hillsborough, Okaloosa, Pasco, and Polk counties -- and a day later in Orange County.

THE MACHINE RECOUNTS AND THE CERTIFICATION. It was clear that each side had placed virtually all its chips on a single bet. Bush was betting that he could block Florida's largely Democratic southern counties from certifying more votes from manual recounts - - relying on Harris' refusal to accept any new results. Gore was wagering that he could find a court to overrule Harris. Meanwhile, he was relying on local authorities in Broward and Palm Beach counties to start their recounts, whether Harris approved or not, so he could put new facts on the ground.

The almost-inevitable result of their brinkmanship had been a series of collisions in three different courts: the state circuit court of Judge Lewis in Tallahassee, the Florida Supreme Court in the same city, and the United States 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

On November 14, one week after the election, Leon County Circuit Court Judge Terry P. Lewis instructed Harris on the legalities of her position as secretary of state. He said, "To determine ahead of time that such returns will be ignored, however, unless caused by some Act of God, is not the exercise of discretion. It is the abdication of discretion." Judge Lewis ruled that under Florida law Harris could not refuse to allow the late reporting of manually counted votes in counties where the presidential vote was disputed. Judge Lewis warned that she could not exercise authority in so arbitrary a way as to permit the delay of final vote tallies only in the case of an act of God, such as a hurricane. Judge Lewis said that she should decide about delayed totals "based upon a weighing and consideration of all attendant facts and circumstances," according to the Washington Post (November 15, 2000). In the balanced decision, Judge Lewis also upheld Harris's authority to call for initial reports from all 67 counties at 5 p.m. later that day.

Later that day, Harris went on national television and said that she would enforce a deadline of 5 p.m. later that day for all counties to submit recount totals. She indicated that she would refuse to certify any vote tallies reached by manual recount and would accept only the mechanical recount automatically triggered by law. Harris commented in the New York Times (November 15, 2000) that the counties that did not certify their vote by the deadline "shall be ignored." That obviously helped Bush, since the hand count asked by the Gore campaign was in heavily Democratic counties. A New York Times (November 15, 2000) editorial said that "any effort by Ms. Harris to stop the hand counting before it is completed would be peremptory and purely partisan."

After the 5 p.m. deadline, Harris announced that all 67 counties reported by the legal deadline of 5 p.m. November 14. She said that Bush led by 300 votes, or 2,910,492 to Gore's 2,910,192 votes, pending the counting of an unknown number of overseas absentee ballots due by November 17.

Harris' arbitrary decision angered Gore's advisors, since at this time the vice president led by a scant 288 votes out of nearly 6 million ballots cast. After meeting with Harris and Baker, Daley said, "We regard the action of the secretary of state to be arbitrary and unreasonable. It seeks to nullify and frustrate the hand count." He added that the Gore campaign, if necessary, would challenge the decision in court. The Gore campaign painted a picture of Harris as being a pawn of the GOP.

Florida Election Commissioner Bob Crawford, a Republican, threatened to disqualify all of the votes from any county which did not complete its count and send its certified results to the state of state by November 14. According to CNN.com (November 11, 2000), Crawford directed his comments at the Gore campaign. "Bob Crawford, who replaced Governor Jeb Bush as commissioner of Florida's Canvassing Commission, said Friday that if a county misses the state's deadline for certifying results, the entire county's vote will be thrown out. The statute is very clear that if a county's results are not to us by 5 p.m. Tuesday, we shall ignore that county's vote, and the counties need to be very aware of that. Candidates asking for recounts need to be aware of that."

Crawford referred to Florida Statutes Section 102.112, which does permit the Department of State to disregard a county's votes if the results are not submitted to the secretary of state within 7 days. However, it should be noted that this statute does not require the secretary of state to take this action. It only allows it. The relevant language reads as follows: "Returns must be filed by 5 p.m. on the 7th day following the first primary and general election and by 3 p.m. on the 3rd day following the second primary. If the returns are not received by the department by the time specified, such returns may be ignored and the results on file at that time may be certified by the department."

These threats by Florida State officials were extremely crucial to Bush's pending request for a court order to block the ongoing hand counts in Palm Beach and other counties, and they appeared to be perfectly timed to strengthen Bush's case. The statements by Harris and Crawford increased Bush's chance of success because they clearly indicated the possibility of "irreparable harm." If what the Florida officials say is true, that they will disqualify hundreds of thousands of votes if the lawful recount were not finished.

Under federal law, a court is much more likely to issue an injunction, the type of order Bush is requesting, if the court finds the injunction is necessary in order to prevent "irreparable harm." As reported in the New York Times (November 12, 2000), Bush's suit did not appear to be on strong grounds: "Some experts said they were skeptical of the suit's chance of succeeding."

While Florida courts have the power to overturn elections and order new ones, they rarely do so because of their reluctance to interfere in politics and a presumption that no election is ever without flaws. According to the New York Times (November 10, 2000), "There is no such thing as a perfect election The experts said that Florida law lays out tests that lawyers for Gore and Bush would probably use as a guide. Those include grounds for challenging an election, like an assertion that officials accepted illegal votes and "any other cause or allegation" that the voters' intent was thwarted.

Election law experts contend that there were no clear answers to the legal questions raised by the battle because, in part, many elections face accusations of errors and improprieties. Courts have adopted a strong presumption that elections are valid to keep from becoming mixed with the political process. The lawsuit was legally weak, according to Democratic and Republican legal experts who were quoted in the Los Angeles Times (November 13, 2000). They maintained that it would be very difficult to convince a federal judge that the mere act of holding manual recounts would irreparably harm the rights of either Bush or the seven Florida Republican voters who were his co-plaintiffs.

THE LEGAL BATTLES BEGIN. The Gore campaign called for hand counts of the ballots in four counties: Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Volusia, and Broder. Christopher said in a CNN interview that errors in the election process were "serious and substantial" and called for a resolution in the Florida courts. Gore campaign manager Daley accused the Bush's forces of resisting efforts to make sure the outcome in Florida would be accurate. He put forth that moral case and accused the Bush campaign of endeavoring, arrogantly, to snatch the presidency.

Daley stressed that Gore had captured the nation-wide popular vote, even though the Electoral College chooses the president. Daley said in the New York Times (November 10, 2000), "If the will of the people is to prevail, Al Gore should be awarded victory in Florida and become president. I believe their actions to try to presumptively crown themselves the victors, to try to put in place a transition, run the risk of dividing the American people and creating confusion." Additionally, Daley sharply criticized Bush for taking it upon himself to declare victory the day before.

Hours later, the Bush campaign answered the charges. Aides seized on an unofficial recount total in Florida as confirming victory for Bush and called on Gore to drop his challenge of the result. Communications director Hughes said in the New York Times (November 10, 2000), "The recount showed Bush won Florida. We hope that the vice president and his campaign will reconsider their threats of lawsuits or still more recounts which could undermine the constitutional process of selecting a president and has no foreseeable end." Later, Hughes added, "We would certainly hope that the Democrats would stop this talk of endless legal battles and still more recounts when we've had a vote. We have laws, we have a constitutional process."

The Bush campaign sought to portray Gore as turning the presidency over to lawyers. "The Democrats are trying to take the election of the president out of the election process, which is controlled by voters," said Haley Barbour, a former Republican national chairman and adviser to the Bush campaign. He added that they were trying to "put it in the court process which is controlled by lawyers."

Karl Rove, Bush's chief strategist, said the ballot called into question in Palm Beach county was similar to one used in Chicago. Rove seemed to be invoking a similar ballot dispute in Cook county in 1960 when John F. Kennedy won the presidency. There have long been accusations that then Mayor Richard J. Daley, the father of Gore's campaign chairman, manipulated the vote for Kennedy. Rove commented, "Maybe Mr. Daley is in a better place to decry democracy and confusion in Cook County than he is in Florida."

When the revote failed to deliver the required votes three days after the election, the Gore campaign continued to follow the legal process in calling for a hand vote. This does not mean that every single ballot need be looked at. What it means is that the ballots rejected by the machine need to be examined for two things. First, and most important, the human counter looks for evidence that the ballot had been punched, but the little paper square, called the "chad" for one reason of the other, has not fallen off. In such cases, the machine would read that ballot as "no vote." Second, when ballots are double-punched, either by the voter or by someone who had the ballot prior to the voter, voters often take a pencil or a pen and indicate their choice with a circle or an arrow. Once the machine has rejected the ballot, the counter can easily see such markings.

The Gore campaign demanded ballots be recounted by hand in four counties -- Maimi-Dade, Palm Beach, Volusia, and Brower -- which were heavily Democratic. In these four counties, nearly 80,000 ballots were not counted in the presidential tally. They were discarded either because they had "overvotes," in which more than one candidate was marked, or "undervotes," where no marking was detected by counting machines. Since the "overvote" had at least two punch holes detected by counting machines, it would be hard for the canvassing board to say that a voter's intent can be discerned. Therefore, a hand recount was unlikely to change those results.

Of the counties in which Democrats had requested a full or partial hand count, there were about 26,000 "undervotes" in several counties -- 10,000 in Palm Beach, 6,000 in Broward, and 10,000 in Miami-Dade. Agreeing that it was a matter of critical public importance, Volusia County's Elections Canvassing Board unanimously agreed to take the extraordinary step of manually recounting the 184,018 ballots. Volusia voters supported Gore over Bush by a margin of 97,063 to 82,214.

There was a potential for human error or illegalities in the election. The Washington Post(November 11, 2000) reported that "in Palm Beach County, there are about 10,000 such ballots, known as ‘undervote' ballots. In Miami-Dade there are another 10,000 to 11,000, and in Broward County about 6,700. All three counties are heavily Democratic, and some Gore officials believe a thorough hand counting of the ‘undervote' ballots might yield additional votes for the vice president.' "

On November 12 the Palm Beach County canvassing board ordered a hand recount of all presidential ballots cast in the county, raising the possibility that a significant number of additional votes could be tallied for Gore. The board voted two-to-one to take the county-wide action after it completed a hand count on a sample of more than 4,500 ballots. The sample amounted to one percent of the votes cast in the election and yielded a net gain of 19 votes for Gore.

In sharp rhetoric, Baker failed to say that Republicans, involved in the Seminole County recount, had hand-examined some ballots and substituted some new ballots for those rejected. How can this possibly be proper when done in Seminole county and then be improper when done in Palm Beach County?

On November 15, Harris filed a petition with the State Supreme Court, as officials in heavily Democratic Palm Beach county gathered to begin a hand recount that she had opposed. In her petition, she said that local canvassing boards should stop any effort to manually count ballots "pending resolution as to whether any basis exists to modify the certified results after the statutory deadline for submission of returns." She also asked that all legal actions around the state be transferred to the State Supreme Court whose seven justices had been appointed by Democratic governors.

Once again, the Gore campaign came out firing. Gore spokesman Doug Hattaway said in the Washington Post (November 15, 2000), "The secretary of state has created the legal complexities with her opinions and roadblocks. If she wants to simplify the process, she should stop all the maneuvering and let the hand counts continue without delay."

Earlier in the day, the Gore campaign asked the Florida State Supreme Court to "take charge" and bring legal clarity to the welter of issues surrounding the recount controversy. The Gore lawyers asked the state judges to resolve three questions of Florida election law. First, are hand recounts permitted? Second, what are the standards for determining that a valid vote has been cast? And third, is there an enforceable deadline?

In the afternoon, the State Supreme Court refused to block hand counts that had commenced in the four counties. But by now it was well understood that all of Harris' decisions had been and would be in the best interest of the Bush campaign. The Bush crony made her decision only hours after the Florida Supreme Court's verdict. Once again, she acted predictably by announcing the termination of the hand counts except for the overseas ballots. Attempting to justify her decision, Harris maintained that she spent considerable time developing criteria for whether to accept hand- counted votes, and she explained her decisions in letters to the counties involved. For example, according to the Los Angeles Times (November 16, 2000), she told Palm Beach County officials that they had provided insufficient reasons to warrant a recount. She noted that there was no fraud, no evidence that the county had been unable to comply with its election duties due to an act of God or other extenuating circumstances beyond its control. She concluded that the county's allegation that a recount "could affect the outcome of the election" was not "enough to justify ignoring the statutory deadline."

Gore's attorneys responded by asking Judge Lewis to rule that Harris had violated an order that he issued the previous day -- that she could not act "arbitrarily" and abused her authority in considering whether to accept hand-counted ballots.

Believing that he had the upper hand in the legal battles, Gore appeared on national television and offered a broad proposal. He offered to drop all lawsuits and to accept the contested Florida results on one condition: If Bush will accede to a hand count of ballots in heavily Democratic precincts or a manual recount of all 6 million votes cast in the state. Gore also proposed a "one- on-one" meeting with Bush "as soon as possible, before the vote is finished ... not to negotiate but to improve the tone of our dialogue in America."

Bush responded four hours later by rejecting Gore's compromise and his offer to meet. Quoted in the New York Times (November 16, 2000), Bush said, "At this unique moment in our nation's history ... we have a responsibility to respect the law and not seek to undermine it when we do not like its outcome. The outcome of this election will not be the result of deals or efforts to mold public opinion." He added, "The election's outcome will be determined by the votes and by the law." Bush contended that during a manual recount such as Gore was requesting, "each time these voting cards are handled, the potential for error is multiplied, additional manual counts of votes that have been counted and recounted will make the process less accurate, not more so."

On the next day, November 17, Judge Lewis predictably ruled that Harris acted within her authority in refusing to accept the hand-counted presidential votes. He said that Harris had the legal authority to enforce the November 14 deadline for counting Florida ballots, since it was set out in state law. But Democrats argued that she had flexibility in deciding whether some counties needed more time. Consequently, Gore's campaign immediately prepared an an appeal.

But in the afternoon, the Supreme Court of Florida blocked the secretary of state from certifying the results of Florida's presidential election. The court emphasized that it did not intend to stop the counting and reporting of "the results of absentee ballots or any other ballots" to Harris, according to the New York Times (November 18, 2000). The high court said it would hear arguments from both sides on November 20.

Florida law is clear. The purpose of a recount is to determine the intent of each voter, but it is silent on how to make that determination -- how many corners of the chad, if any, have to be detached to make the vote count. There were no clear guidelines on how to judge a dimpled ballot. Consequently, the canvassing board in each of the four counties -- Palm Beach, Volusia, Broward, and Miami-Dade -- made their own guidelines on how the ballots would be counted.initially the three-member boards in Palm Beach County and Broward County resisted stating precisely what type of marks or dents constitute a vote. Instead, they first carefully examined the ballots on a case-by-case basis.

MIAMI-DADE AND PALM BEACH COUNTIES. Counting teams looked only at ballots that have clearly punched holes or chads that have at least two corners poked out. Any ballot that did not fit those criteria was given to the canvassing board which said that only those with clear voter's intent would be considered.

Gore's lawyers appealed to a Leon County Circuit Court Judge N. Sanders Saul, requesting that Miami-Dade County's hand-tallied ballots, which the secretary of state had refused to accept, be continued. The issue centered on the number of ballots to be shipped by convoy from South Florida to the Tallahassee courtroom. Gore's lawyers were worried about running out of time before a December 12 deadline to certify Florida's 25 electors, so they moved to accelerate the pace of the legal challenges.

The Bush camp, on the other hand, sought delays at every turn. wanted only 3,300 disputed ballots from Palm Beach and 10,000 from Miami-Dade counties to be brought to Tallahassee, and they requested an immediate review of those ballots by the court. The Texas governor's lawyers attempted to overwhelm a court system confronted with a legal contest that normally would take months. They tried to make the case that the 10,000 uncounted ballots were not uncommon. Ultimately, Bush's attorneys convinced Judge Sauls to order all of the 1.1 million ballots from Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties be shipped to Tallahassee.

Irvin Terrell, one attorney, was quoted in Slate magazine (November 29, 2000) in saying that a lot of people voted on Election Day and chose not to cast a ballot for president. He said that those 10,000 nonvotes were about 1.6 percent of the votes cast in that county. But along with the 10,000 nonvotes were more "undervotes." There were 18,000 of those, which added to the 10,000 meant that 4.4 percent of the votes cast in Miami were nonvotes, not 1.6 percent. Additionally, as Terrell claimed, there were not 34 Florida counties with higher rates of nonvotes than Miami-Dade; there were only 26. It was not clear why this figure should matter in any case since the failure to count valid votes was a problem around the state of Florida, thanks to the widespread use of punch-card voting systems. If anything, the large number of counties with substantial quantities of nonvotes substantiated the argument that Bush should have agreed to a statewide hand recount.

Terrell also was incorrect in comparing the Miami nonvote tally to figures from other states. Only Idaho (5 percent), not Wyoming (3.6 percent) or Illinois (3.8 percent), had a higher rate of nonvotes than Dade County (4.4 percent), according to the Bush campaign's own numbers. These were all very high rates, mostly attributable to the same problem that occurred in much of Florida: punch-card systems that produce dangling and dimpled chad and then cannot read them. These undervotes were not counted by hand in other states because they clearly did not matter. The margin of victory for either candidate in Illinois, Wyoming, and Idaho was larger than the total number of nonvotes in the presidential race. Had Bush lost Illinois by 1,000 or so votes, he would have demanded a hand recount.

Cheney also attempted to make the same point about the normalcy of nonvotes, and he, likewise, failed to make sense. The vice presidential nominee said on "Larry King Live" (November 28, 2000), "They've focused in on the 10,000 votes in Miami-Dade County that supposedly are unmarked. But there are some 34 counties in Florida that have a larger percentage of unmarked ballots for president than those in Dade County. If you go across this country, you'll find a large number of ballots cast by voters who go in, don't want to decide between the two candidates."

Cheney was inaccurate when he claimed that there were 26 counties with a higher nonvote rate than Miami-Dade. Actually, there were as few as seven that had a larger percentage of undervotes, or what Cheney called "unmarked ballots." Furthermore, the more significant deception was Cheney's assertion that the 10,000 undervotes in Miami-Dade County merely reflected voters failing to make a choice among the candidates. This clearly was not true. The optical scanning system used elsewhere in Florida produced approximately one-fourth the number of undervotes that punch-card systems do (.4 percent vs. 1.5 percent). The problem was not that Miami voters -- or those in Broward County, Palm Beach County, or elsewhere -- were four times less likely to express a choice for president. The problem was that the machine used to count their votes was much worse at detecting their preferences.

Two weeks after Election Day, the Dade-Miami County canvassing board terminated the hand-count process after the secretary of state said that those results would not be counted. Then the State Supreme Court allowed the hand tally to proceed, and county officials voted again to begin another tally on November 19.

However, the canvassing board said that they could not meet the November 26 deadline set by the State Supreme Court. Additionally, Democratic county officials were threatened and felt intimidated by hostile anti-Gore protesters. Consequently, the three-member board voted to terminate the hand recount. The New York Times (November 24, 2000) reported that the canvassing board's decision was based on actual physical violence. Joe Geller, chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, was escorted to safety by the police after a crowd chased him down and accused him of stealing a ballot. Upstairs in the Clark center, several people were trampled, punched, or kicked when protesters tried to rush the doors outside the office of the Miami-Dade supervisor of elections. Sheriff's deputies restored order. When it was over, the rule of the mob was triumphant. The three canvassers voted to walk away from the recount whose tally would likely have led to Gore's victory over Bush in Florida and in the presidential election.

One of its members, David Leahy, acknowledged the protests were a factor in his decision. The other two, perhaps fearful of their safety, declined all interviews. As the mob celebrated its victory, its Republican Party moved its operations to Broward County where they employed the same tactics against that county's canvassers.

Even some conservatives went so far as to celebrate the triumph of mob rule over democracy and rule of law. Paul Gigot, a commentator for PBS's "NewsHour" and the Wall Street Journaleditorial page, praised what he termed the "bourgeois riot." Gigot himself heard John Sweeney, a visiting GOP monitor, telling an aide, "Shut it down," and thereby inspiring what he called the "semi-spontaneous combustion" that forced the counters to "cave in."

Gore's lawyers appealed the canvassing board's decision to scrap the recount to the State Supreme Court which refused to rule the recount to continue. The decision was a serious setback to Gore whose aides promptly announced that he would formally contest the certified results of the Florida election. The verdict hurt Gore in two ways. It deprived him of a large pool of questionable ballots that might have proved rich in newfound votes missed by machine counters. And it wiped away more than 100 new votes for him that the Miami-Dade County recount had turned up that morning. But the Gore camp received a severe setback when the State Supreme Court denied his campaign's appeal to force Miami-Dade to resume its manual recount. The court's opinion read, "The writ is denied without prejudice to any party raising any issue presented in the writ in any future proceeding. No motion for rehearing will be allowed," according to the Washington Post (November 24, 2000).

On December 1, Gore suffered a setback when the State Supreme Court refused to order an immediate recount of 13,300 contested ballots from Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties. Four days later, Judge Sauls delivered another severe blow by denying the vice president's request for a hand recount of roughly 14,000 disputed ballots. The judge also upheld the actions of election officials during earlier recounts in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Nassau counties.

Sauls was quoted in the New York Times (December 5, 2000) as saying that there was no "credible statistical evidence" that further recounting would produce a result different from the one certified by Florida's secretary of state. In addition, Sauls said, there was no evidence of any "illegality, dishonesty, gross negligence, improper influence, coercion, or fraud in the balloting and counting processes." The verdict was a double blow on the same day for Gore, since just hours before the United States Supreme Court set aside a ruling by Florida's highest court that allowed hand recounting of votes for 12 days after the state's normal election cutoff date of November 14.

VOLUSIA COUNTY. Volusia County used a ballot where the voter was supposed to fill in an oval next to the candidate's name -- much like a standardized test. In the manual recount, any vote where the intention was clear to the counters within 15 seconds -- and agreed upon by the Republican and Democratic observers working with each team -- was counted. As the result of the State Supreme Court's decision to proceed with the hand re-tally, officials began their re-tally.

After the secretary of state issued the deadline for county's to certify their results, Gore's lawyers joined in a lawsuit already filed by officials in Volusia County who sought an order to allow the hand-recounting to continue until finished and be included in the official tally.

As the hand recounts were underway, the Bush campaign issued its broadest attack yet on the integrity of the process. Bush's legal team painted a picture of turmoil in the counting areas, claiming that the workers tallying the votes were confused and that ballot cards were misplaced and that some had been tampered with. GOP Governor Marc Racicot of Montana said that in Palm Beach, several Bush votes were found in a Gore pile. Raciot charged in the Washington Post (November 19, 2000) that two witnesses claimed that they saw the punched-out bit of paper next to a Bush vote taped back on. Several ballots had "Post-It" notes attached to the vote punch section, while other ballots had fallen on the floor and were stepped on. Democrats in Florida contended that the Bush campaign was deliberately trying to paint a picture of chaos and fraud to cast unfair doubt on the hand count.

BROWARD COUNTY. Initially, the canvassing board said it would not consider votes with anything less than two corners of the chad detached. Then the three-member canvassing board unanimously reversed itself and decided to examine "the totality of each ballot," including those that are merely dimpled without any detached corners, in determining voter intent. Officials unanimously ordered a full hand count of its 588,000 ballots.

NASSAU COUNTY. Nassau County officials threw out results of a mechanical recount saying the results were somehow flawed and submitted election night results to the state instead. The election night results netted Bush 52 votes: 16,404 to 6,952. Then the recount that, for reasons officials could not explain, totaled about 200 fewer ballots than those initially tabulated. That second, mechanical recount gave Bush 16,280 votes to Gore's 6,879.

Calling the county's actions "inexplicable," the Gore campaign accused Nassau County elections officials of violating Florida laws by eventually reversing itself and submitting the initial election night returns. The Gore campaign asked Leon County Circuit Judge N. Sanders Sauls to bar Harris from awarding Florida's 25 electoral votes to Bush until the conclusion of court challenges to election results in the counties.

SEMINOLE COUNTY. Three residents of Seminole County brought a lawsuit alleging that in Leon County Circuit Court the state election canvassing commission and the Seminole County supervisor of elections acted illegally. The disclosures came through a lawsuit in which Gore's lawyers hoped to disqualify over 15,000 absentee ballots. About two-thirds of those ballots were cast for Bush. In a 132-page deposition, Elections Supervisor Sandra Goard, a Republican, said that Seminole County voting officials informally tallied votes with few security checks or paper trails.

Additionally, CSPAN reported on December 6 that there were 2,126 voter identification numbers that GOP operative Michael Leach illegally added to GOP absentee ballot requests proved to be incorrect. Elections office staff members stated under oath that supervisor Goard instructed them to accept all request forms filled in by Leach whether the voter identification number was correct or incorrect. But Goard had repeatedly and publicly stated her policy that no absentee ballot request would be accepted without the voter identification filled in by the voter, family member, or guardian as required by Florida law.

The plaintiffs contended that the election officials agreed to let two local Republicans use the supervisor's office for 10 days to fill out incomplete ballot request forms. The Seminole lawsuit alleged that by accepting ballots that were obtained through request forms that had been fraudulently altered, elections officials violated their own rules and committed a third-degree felony.

According to the Los Angeles Times (November 28, 2000), Goard acknowledged that two representatives of the state Republican Party used a back room in her office for 10 days to correct the ballot applications. Goard conceded that no one ever was allowed to correct applications in the past, and that her staff assisted the GOP representatives by sorting Republican applications from Democratic applications -- something else that never had been done before. According to the documents, Goard said that her office did not check the identification of one of the two men, and she told attorneys that she had no idea who he was. She said that the men were not supervised while they worked. Many of the requests resulted from a mass mailing by the Florida Republican Party, urging voters to use absentee ballots. According to Reuters (November 21, 2000), Jacobs' lawsuit alleged that applicants were supposed to list their voter identification numbers on the absentee ballot request forms, but many did not and the party workers filled them in at the election supervisor's office.

A state law adopted in 1998 was meant to prevent voter fraud with absentee ballots, because a year earlier charges of illegalities were made after the Miami mayoral election. The new Florida law required voters to supply their name, address, voter registration number, and the last four digits of their Social Security number to obtain an absentee ballot by mail. Under the law, only a voter, his legal guardian or a member of his immediate family could fill out the request form.

Kent Spriggs, attorney for the Seminole plaintiffs, said a handwriting analysis showed that at least 1,900 ballots were altered and should be thrown out -- a move that could have guaranteed the presidency for Gore.

MARTIN COUNTY. In Martin County, elections officials allowed local GOP officials to take the applications to the local party headquarters to make the corrections. On December 1, Gore officials filed a lawsuit, asking for nearly 10,000 absentee ballots to be disqualified.

The county's Republican supervisor of elections, Peggy Robbins, allowed GOP workers to take flawed absentee ballot forms home and correct them but allegedly denied Democrats the same opportunity to make fixes. Democrats contended that the arrangement between Robbins and GOP representatives constituted election fraud. Republicans conceded that the forms were corrected but said the actions do not constitute election fraud--the only standard under which votes can be thrown out.

Democrats asked Circuit Judge Terry Lewis in Tallahassee to throw out all 9,773 absentee ballots. Nearly 6,300 of those votes were cast for Bush, while 3,479 were cast for Gore. Republican representatives corrected 2,132 absentee ballot forms. Once they were corrected, the ballots were sent to the voters, 1,936 of whom sent back actual votes. An estimated 95 percent of them voted for Bush, according to the Los Angeles Times (December 2, 2000).

Weeks before the November 7 election, both parties sent thousands of postcards to Florida voters likely to back their candidate. The cards were supposed to require only the voter's signature before an absentee ballot would be sent to their home. But a contractor hired by the GOP botched the cards and printed the voter's birthday in a spot reserved for voter identification numbers. That made the cards invalid, according to Florida law. Republicans realized their mistake in both counties and were allowed to correct it so the absentee votes would be counted.

BUSH AND HIS PIT BULLS. ABC News (November 25, 2000) reported that the anti-Gore protests in Miami were neither spontaneous nor local. It was an organized Republican Party protest, run by 75 party operatives out of a headquarters in a motor home in Miami. While canvassing board officials were busy hand recounting votes, pro-Bush demonstrators attempting to disrupt the process clashed with police. The subsequent demonstrations turned violent on Wednesday, November 22 after the canvassers had decided to close the recount to the public because of fears of physical violence

Democrats felt threatened and intimidated. The New York Times (November 24, 2000) reported that Joe Geller, chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, was escorted to safety by the police after a crowd chased him down and accused him of stealing a ballot. Upstairs in the Clark center, several people were trampled, punched or kicked when protesters tried to rush the doors outside the office of the Miami-Dade County supervisor of elections. Sheriff's deputies restored order. When the ruckus was over, the protesters had what they had wanted: a unanimous vote by the board to terminate the hand counting.

Democratic Congressman Peter Deutsch of Florida told the Associated Press (November 25, 2000), "There are paid political operatives from out of state who have come down to South Florida" and helped stop the recount in Miami, said . "I think we need to immediately have a federal investigation of this attempt to stop a fair and accurate count." Democrats interviewed by CNN said that federal voting laws were violated when paid protesters from out of state were flown into Florida to try to stop the election process.

On Friday, November 24 over 100 noisy Bush supporters yelled slogans such as "no more Gore" in Miami. At one point, the Associated Press (November 24, 2000) reported that there was a minor confrontation between police and a crowd of about 200 Bush supporters when 20 motorcycle riders showed up to support Bush and drove too close to the building. The group, calling themselves "Nam Knights" and riding Harley Davidson motorcycles, said that they were there to make sure Gore did not squash the military vote. The pro-Bush protesters rushed onto the property, surrounding and cheering the bikers. Police ordered everybody off the property and moved them all back onto the main road.

Aides who accepted the free trip to Florida took advantage of congressional workplace rules that allowed them to move from government jobs to political tasks at a moment's notice by declaring themselves on vacation or temporary leave. The Wall Street Journal quoted one GOP operative: "Once word leaked out, everybody wanted in." Participants estimated that more than 200 staffers signed on, some spending more than a week in South Florida. Many stayed in Hiltons by the beach and received $30 a day for food, as well as an invitation to an exclusive Thanksgiving Day party in Fort Lauderdale. A GOP aide said in the Wall Street Journal, "To tell you the truth, nobody knows who is calling the shot." Many nights, often very late, a memo is slipped underneath the hotel-room doors outlining coming events. On November 24 one aide received notice that he and his colleagues were welcome to stay in South Florida until "further notice."

Some of the Republican protesters were not local citizens. They were Capitol Hill aides on all-expenses paid trips, courtesy of the Bush campaign. The Wall Street Journal (November 27, 2000) reported that some of the high profile anti-Gore demonstrators included Thomas Pyle, an aide to GOP House Whip Tom DeLay; Michael Murphy who worked for a DeLay fund-raising committee; and Doug Heye from California Congressman Richard Pombo's office. Several GOP aides said that DeLay's office took charge of the effort on Capitol Hill and provided free air fare, accommodations, and food in Florida -- all paid for by the Bush campaign.

Sheila Moloney of Virginia was quoted by the Associated Press (November 24, 2000), "We're concerned about what is going on here, and we came down to help in any way we can; this is history." The Republicans were handing out free T-shirts and sodas to people joining the crowd. Democrat Ron Klein of the Florida Senate called the crowd "mercenaries" and said that the Democrats were "not using campaign staff to stage fake rallies to deceive the American people."

Meanwhile, Republican operatives celebrated the decision to halt the recount. They partied at the Hyatt hotel on Pier 66 in Fort Lauderdale, and Bush and his vice presidential running mate Dick Cheney called to thank them. According to the Wall Street Journal, (November 27, 2000), Bush and Cheney joked about the events in Miami. The Bush campaign also supplied entertainment. Singer Wayne Newton crooned the song, Danke Schoen.

The GOP operatives and their motor home later moved on to Broward County where a manual recount was continuing. Bush supporters sometimes outnumbered Gore backers by 10 to one outside the Broward County Courthouse in the Democrat-leaning community. A block to the north, a recreational vehicle festooned with Bush-Cheney signs served as operation central, having recently been transferred from similar duty in Miami. In Palm Beach County, Republican lawyers followed a different strategy. They lodged repeated objections, slowing the count and contributing to the canvassing board missing by two hours a deadline for turning in the revised tally.

DEMOCRATS ATTEMPT TO SQUELCH THE VIOLENCE. While the GOP protests appeared orchestrated, the Democrats also had AFL-CIO organizers deployed in South Florida. As reported in Salon (December 6, 2000), the Democratic National Committee chose to use them as affidavit takers and peaceful recount observers rather than rabble-rousers. Within days after the Nov. 7 election, Salon reported that labor organizers were in an attack mode, preparing a grass-roots offensive of demonstrations against Republicans. According to two national labor organizers, top DNC officials who got their orders from Gore campaign manager William Daley shut down labor's organizing efforts. The DNC deployed them as affidavit takers, and on November 20, at the start of the recount in Miami-Dade County, to sit as recount observers.

Ultimately, it was the Bush campaign which recruited obnoxious protesters who accused Democrats of stealing ballots. Salon reported that they had a sit-in outside the office of the supervisor of elections when the board tried to move the counting to a room out of public view. Meanwhile, it was the docile Democrats who discouraged bickering with local officials while their staff collected voter affidavits in an effort to win the battle in the courts.

GORE'S UPHILL FIGHT. The 12 judges of the federal appeals court in Atlanta refused a Republican request to block recounts, concluding in a six-paragraph opinion that federal court intervention was not justified because the state courts apparently stood ready to "address and resolve any necessary federal constitutional issues presented to them."

The most important proceeding was unraveling in the State Supreme Court in Tallahassee. Over the weekend of November 18, Gore and Bush lawyers filed hundreds of pages of briefs on November 18 and 19. The seven-member court was asked to decide not only the validity of the deadline and whether the final certification must include the outcome of the manual recounts, but also how the punch-card ballots subject to the recounts were actually to be counted. The Republican arguments mirrored those that another legal team had brought unsuccessfully before the Federal District Court in Miami a week earlier. While the federal lawsuit was technically still alive, despite the refusal on November 17 by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11thCircuit to issue an emergency injunction to stop the recounts, it was in a procedural impasse that made a successful appeal to the United States Supreme Court extremely unlikely. But the Bush brief contained several pages of arguments asserting that the manual recounts violated federal law and the United States Constitution. Thus, the Bush lawyers were preserving those issues for an eventual appeal to the United States Supreme Court. On the other hand, Gore's attorneys, in their 64-page brief filed with the State Supreme Court, did not cite a single federal case, limiting itself strictly to issues of Florida law.

Both sides presented their arguments to the seven-judge panel for more than two hours on Monday, November 20. Attorneys on both sides tried to untangle the bitterly contested election process that would determine the next president. Among the key issues before the justices were:

Did Harris have the right to impose the deadline -- which passed last week -- on vote counts? Enforcing that deadline would render the current manual recounts irrelevant and presumably make Bush the winner.

Must Florida officials certify modified tallies that will stem from the manual recounts? Gore's hope of overcoming Bush's lead hinged on the recounts netting him nearly 1,000 votes that counting machines had overlooked.

What standards should election workers apply to questionable punch-card ballots? Bush wanted a stricter standard, which would allow a ballot only where the voter punched the card hard enough to perforate it. Gore wanted a looser standard, in which an indentation or "dimpled chad" would serve as sufficient evidence of the voter's intent, even if the punch-card was not perforated.

The following evening, Florida's highest court handed down its ruling. In a 42-page unanimous decision that was a major victory for Gore, the State Supreme Court allowed the hand recounts to continue in the three counties -- Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade -- and that the election be certified by November 26.

According to the Washington Post (November 22, 2000), the court said that "an accurate vote count is one of the essential foundations of our democracy," and that the right of the people to vote took precedence over "a hypertechnical reliance upon statutory provision." The justices concluded that Harris had erred in announcing that she would reject amended tallies from the counties still conducting manual recounts. The court ruled that Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade counties must conclude the hand counting of ballots. But the court declined to establish explicit standards for county officials to use in determining which ballots are counted by hand, as Gore's lawyers had asked, leaving it to the counties for now to decide that critical question for themselves.

Gore said that the court opinion ensures "a full, fair and accurate" vote count. Whoever prevails in that contest, he said, "We do know that our democracy is the winner tonight." Once again, Gore called on Bush to "demonstrate the essential unity" that would be necessary to bring the country together once the winner was declared. He also said that it was appropriate for both candidates to go forward with transition planning. Finally, he emphasized that despite his lead in the popular vote, the Constitution calls for the winner to be determined by the Electoral College. And he disavowed any efforts to persuade electors pledged to Bush to switch their votes. "I will not accept the support of any elector pledged to Governor Bush." Gore's lead attorney, David Boies, predicted that any appeal to the United States Supreme Court by the Bush lawyers would fail because, "It's a matter of Florida law. ... There is no basis to appeal this to the United States Supreme Court."

THE BUSH CAMPAIGN'S STRATEGY. It was clear to the nation that Bush had lost the national popular vote by one-third of a million votes. Gore was the choice of the American people -- Bush. It also became increasingly clear that Bush was not the choice of a plurality of Florida voters who went to the polls, nor it seemed even those who managed to overcome Election Day obstacles and actually cast legal ballots.

To counter these political realities, Bush pursued a three-pronged strategy: he claimed victory, he frustrated or blocked legal recounts, and he relied on Florida's Republican officials to hand over the 25 electoral votes he needs to win the Electoral College. Facing Democratic lawsuits asking for a recount of "under-votes," Bush's new tactic was to turn the concept of a court injunction on its head. His lawyers tried to seek to stall the state-court-ordered recount until after December 12 when Bush's certified victory would presumably become official and render any recount meaningless. In demanding the stay, Bush's lawyers argued that the vote counting was a threat to "the integrity of the electoral process" and could cause Bush "irreparable injury."

Bush's lawyers hoped to use a federal injunction to inflict irreparable harm, not prevent it. This new injunction strategy was the latest move in a month-long chess game aimed at blocking examination of ballots that were kicked out by machine counters. The antiquated voting machines in predominantly poor areas of Florida failed to record votes as accurately as did modern machines in more affluent precincts. Even one of Bush's own expert witnesses, John Ahmann, testified that the only way to check whether the faulty machines had rejected legitimate votes was to examine them by hand, according to the New York Times (December 4, 2000). A manual review of the ballots would even out the voting process, so poor voters would have comparable voting rights as wealthier ones. Yet, such a review is precisely what the Bush campaign has fought for the past month.

On November 22 Baker went so far as to sharply denounce the Florida Supreme Court for extending a deadline that permitted continued recounts in three South Florida counties, and he virtually invited the Florida Legislature to intervene. He said that the Bush campaign would "examine whatever remedies we may have to correct this unjust result." Baker also claimed that the Supreme Court "rewrote the legislature's statutory (election) system" and assumed the powers of the executive branch. He added, "Two weeks after the election, (the) court has changed the rules and invented a new system for counting the election results."

In its ruling, the Florida State Supreme Court rejected the insistence of Harris that a deadline fixed in state law prevented her from accepting amended returns after November 14. Instead, the court said that Harris must accept amended vote totals until Sunday, November 26.

The court ruled, according to the New York Times (November 22, 2000): "Twenty-five years ago, this court commented that the will of the people, not a hyper-technical reliance upon statutory provisions, should be our guiding principle in election cases." Referring to Harris, the court said, "To allow the secretary to summarily disenfranchise innocent electors in an effort to punish dilatory board members, as she proposes in the present case, misses the constitutional mark. The constitution eschews punishment by proxy."

CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS DEMAND AN INVESTIGATION. On November 24 five Democratic members of the United States House of Representatives called for a federal investigation into Miami-Dade County's abrupt decision to halt its manual recount of votes. They charged that Bush's campaign may have orchestrated a "climate of fear" to intimidate the board, according to the Associated Press (November 24, 2000). The five urged Attorney General Janet Reno to ask the Justice Department to launch an investigation into the decision to halt the manual recount in Miami-Dade County.

The letter to the attorney general said that "unruly and violent protesters managed to create a climate of fear and intimidation, with the intent of preventing the canvassing board from completing its task" and that "published reports strongly suggest these actions were orchestrated by the Bush campaign." The letter from the Democratic politicians said that if the actions occurred as reported, "they could amount to voter intimidation in violation of federal law. ... By preventing the canvassing board from completing its recount, these actions undermined the right to vote."

The letter was signed by Democratic representatives Peter Deutsch and Carrie Meek of Florida, Sheila Jackson-Lee and Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, and William Jefferson of Louisiana. It was also signed by Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting delegate from Washington, D.C.

BUSH CHASTISES THE STATE SUPREME COURT. On November 22, the Texas governor held his first news conference since Election Day. Twice previously he had read a TelePrompTer or read speeches prepared by his lawyers. He told reporters, according to the Washington Post (November 24, 2000), "I think I'm going to win, particularly if the vote is accurately and fairly counted."

Bush took an extraordinary risk by dressing down the Florida State Supreme Court in extending the deadline for the secretary of state to validate the election. He may have had the right to register his unhappiness about the rulings, but the increasingly bellicose statements made by the Texas governor reflected his political immaturity. He all but declared that the presidential election was illegitimate unless he won. Furthermore, he hinted that the Florida Legislature should somehow neutralize the Supreme Court's decisions. According to the New York Times(November 24, 2000), Bush risked undermining the rule of law and the office he hoped to occupy.

Bush used dangerous rhetoric when he called the hand count approved by the State Supreme Court "a process that invites human error and mischief." And it was worse when he said the unanimous court "rewrote the law" and overreached its authority. He added, "Writing laws is the duty of the Legislature; administering laws is the duty of the executive branch." What Bush ignored was that the primary duty of the courts was to interpret laws and especially to make sense out of conflicting laws. The Florida Supreme Court did precisely that in considering the statutory approval of recounts that would necessarily take longer than the one-week certification deadline set out in another law. When Bush took questions, he refused to answer if he would appeal the court's decision, as he deferred to his Florida attorneys. Bush attempted to explain the role of two of the government's branches regarding the separation of powers. He erroneously stated, "The legislature's job is to write the law, the executive branch's job is to interpret it."

Additionally, Bush's plan to take his case to the United States Supreme Court was not warranted as a matter of law. The legal issues raised by the Florida vote properly belonged within the jurisdiction of the Florida courts, and the state's highest court spoke authoritatively on these issues. According to the Times, the State Supreme Court's decisions "should be regarded by both the Bush and Gore campaigns as definitive in completing the tabulation of Florida's votes and declaring a winner. Mr. Bush will have a hard time persuading the justices to overturn the Florida court because there is clearly not a constitutional argument that the manual hand counts violate due process or equal protection rights under the 14th Amendment."

Other GOP leaders as well as other well known conservatives made disturbing statements. They believed that the Gore campaign had defied the law and tried to steal the election. Baker and Florida House Speaker Tom Feeney said that the state Legislature was considering writing new laws after the fact and that it could intervene in the naming of the state's representatives to the Electoral College, substituting its judgment for that of 6 million voters.

Rush Limbaugh told his listeners, "We know the whole thing has been rigged, and we've known from the get-go." Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, said in the Los Angeles Times (November 23, 2000), "He's trying to steal the election. Gore's concern is he doesn't have enough votes to win, so he keeps changing the rules until he gets what he wants."

"This is impeachment, the sequel," said Marshall Wittmann, an analyst with the conservative Hudson Institute. Columnist George Will has referred to Gore's "slow-motion larceny." Former Ronald Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan asked in a Wall Street Journal opinion column: "Could a political party steal a prize as big and rich and obvious as the presidency? Yes. Of course." William Bennett, the former Education secretary, threatened to walk off CNN's "The Capital Gang" after rivals continued to quiz him after he insisted that Gore "is trying to steal this election."

"I take it you want me to play lunatic," Weekly Standard (November 22, 2000) editorial writer David Tell said when asked about his own charge in the conservative magazine that Gore had mounted "an attempted coup." Tell explained: "This is about the law and the two men who are supposed to be upholding the honor of the law. One of them is not."

Some right-leaning writers said that they took up the cause only in response to fiery remarks from former Clinton aide Paul Begala, who on MSNBC's Web site referred to hate crime murders committed in states that had voted heavily for Bush. Begala referred to a United States electoral map where the states shaded red for Bush outnumbered Gore's blue and wrote, "If you look closely at that map, you see a more complex picture, you see the state where James Byrd was lynch-dragged behind a pickup truck" and a "state where Matthew Shepard was crucified on a split-rail fence for the crime of being gay."

Columnist Michael Kelly linked Begala's comments to Gore's determined recount campaign and wrote that the vice president "has managed to spin his extraordinary, radical, unprecedented behavior as reasonable -- and legitimate." Wall Street Journal editorial board member John Fund explained, "I think the protests of the military ballots struck an emotional chord. It represented a rhetorical Rubicon for Gore. They knocked off a couple hundred ballots but brought themselves a world of hurt."

After all those promises of restoring dignity to the White House, once again Bush showed his lack of ethics and common sense as he dressed down Florida's highest court. His contentious statements and dangerous rhetoric reflected his political immaturity when he castigated the court for "inviting human error and mischief." Furthermore, he made allegations that the justices surpassed their authority as they "rewrote the law."

KATHERINE HARRIS DELIVERS FLORIDA TO BUSH. Nineteen days after the election, Harris awarded Florida's 25 electoral votes to Bush, and the Texas governor proclaimed himself the nation's next president. According to Harris, Bush carried the popular vote by a meager 537 votes out of more than 6 million cast. Bush called on the Clinton administration to help in handing over the White House, even as the legal battle continued, saying he looked forward to "a constructive working relationship throughout this transition."

First, not only did Harris refuse to accept the Palm Beach handcount, but the hand count itself was too restrictive in not taking into account how the presidential slot on the Palm Beach butterfly ballot could be dimpled while the other selections could be punched through. The explanation had to do with the thickness of the book in relation to the presidential selection as well as the tray used to catch the chads that have fallen under the presidential selections. Second, the inability of the Miami-Dade County counters to look at the 11,000 undervoted ballots while being intimidated by Republican goon squads was being contested. A partial hand count never reported gave Gore an additional 157 votes; a full count of the undervotes would have yielded a bulge of at least 1,000 votes for Gore. Finally, since Bush-majority Nassau County decided to count the first machine count rather than the legally mandated second count, Bush was given an additional 52 votes that the Democrats considered illegal.

The Gore team was said to be stunned by Harris' decision to exclude Palm Beach County's hand-counted results in the total she certified. Within minutes, Lieberman was on television denouncing the results as "an incomplete and inaccurate count" and asserting that he and Gore had no choice but to contest the results in court. Lieberman said in the New York Times(November 27, 2000), "What is at issue here is nothing less than every American's simple, sacred right to vote." On the other side of the aisle, Baker called on Gore to cease his legal fight and concede the election. Bush's hit man told a national television audience, "At some point there must be closure.

Since most of the counties the Bush team attempted to sue on the matter of overseas ballots had looked at those ballots again and had come up with more Bush votes which have been counted by Harris, a Gore lead created through favorable rulings in the three contested counties could then be offset by having the United States Supreme Court ruling that all of the Florida hand counts were unconstitutional.

On Monday, November 27, Gore's lawyers filed a lawsuit claiming that the secretary of state's official vote count was incorrect in three counties: Miami-Dade, where officials first agreed to do a manual recount but then abandoned it; Palm Beach, whose manual recount was rejected because results were incomplete; and Nassau, where officials threw out the results of a mechanical recount and relied instead on the initial count from Election Day.

Gore's attorneys said that this lawsuit would have a more direct impact on the election than the Supreme Court hearing, because Florida's laws on contests give judges wide discretion in considering proof that the wrong person was elected. In addition to things like bribery and fraud, the law allows the judge to accept "any other cause or allegation" that proves the outcome was wrong, according to the New York Times (November 27, 2000). The law is so broad that it allows a judge to perform a manual recount of a county's votes itself, or appoint someone else to do it.

The Gore campaign presented its case to a circuit court judge in Leon County which has jurisdiction in statewide election challenges. In the case of Miami-Dade County where election officials stopped counting, the Democrats contested two issues. First, there were the 388 votes (which would have added 157 to Gore's total) that were manually counted and then discarded when the board stopped counting. Second, there were about 10,000 ballots showing no vote for president that were never examined by the board. Democrats had charged that a demonstration by Republicans intimidated the board.

The Palm Beach contest also had two parts: the rejection of the manually counted ballots by Harris, and the standard used by the county board in judging dimpled ballots which the Democrats had said discarded too many valid votes. In Nassau County, the Democrats asked the judge to look into the election board's decision to discard the machine recount that was required by law, and to revert to the election-night total. That decision removed 52 votes from Gore's column.

THE FLORIDA STATE LEGISLATURE. Florida's Legislature emerged as a potential avenue of appeal after the State Supreme Court dealt Bush a major setback. Baker raised the prospect as he condemned the court's ruling. He said that the Bush camp was not asking for a special session but he hinted such action was being considered. Baker said in the Washington Post (November 22, 2000), "I would not be surprised to see the Legislature perhaps take some action to get back to the original statutory provisions." In order to call a special session of the State Legislature, both chambers would either have to approve it by two-thirds, or get a proclamation from Governor Jeb Bush.

Florida's GOP-majority Legislature considered trying to select the state's 25 electors and award the White House to the candidate of its choice, regardless of who wins the state's popular- vote contest. The House GOP leader was quoted in the New York Times (November 23, 2000): "The Legislature may have to step in and select those electors. Senator Daniel Webster, the former speaker of the Florida House who represented Orlando in the Senate, concurred: "Our power has been challenged, not just for this election. If they can make this arbitrary ruling on this statute, they can make it for anything. They have clearly gone beyond their power and by doing that have jeopardized all laws." But Democratic State Senator Debbie Wasserman Schultz objected in the New York Times: "It would be a travesty. It would be a smack in the face to Florida's citizens. If the Republican leadership has a problem with this decision, there is an appeals process and that process should be adhered to."

The Bush campaign's plot to use the Florida Legislature, if necessary, was revealed on November 28 when three lawyers hired by the Republican leaders of the Legislature told a select committee that the body was duty-bound under the United States Constitution to promptly call a special session to the state's 25 electors. That would virtually assure Bush of receiving all of the state's votes, and consequently it would propel him into the White House.

Two days later, a special joint committee of the Legislature recommended that the whole body meet in special session to consider appointing Florida's slate of 25 electors. The move drew immediate criticism from the Gore camp. Lieberman told reporters that the legislators were "prepared to put their judgment in place of the judgment of six million voters of Florida." He called the move a "terrible mistake for the country," according to the New York Times (December 1, 2000). Lieberman added, "We're talking about the integrity of the selection of the president of the United States." He also criticized Governor Jeb Bush for saying that he would sign legislation naming electors and suggested that the Florida governor stay with the course he set when he recused himself from the state election canvassing commission.

According to Erwin Chemerinsky of the University of Southern California Law School, the Florida Legislature lacks the power to determine the state's slate of electors. Chemerinsky explained in the Los Angeles Times (December 1, 2000) that federal law allows a state legislature to allocate a state's electoral votes only if the state fails to determine the winner of its popular vote by December 12. The federal statute in question, Title 3 of the United States Code, Section 2, permits the legislature to pick electors if they have not been selected by the voters "on the day prescribed by law." Federal law designates December 12 as the deadline for states to choose their electors. So long as the Florida vote is final by that day, and the Florida Supreme Court already has declared that it will ensure that the entire process is completed by then, the Legislature lacks any power under federal law to choose electors.

Moreover, Chermerinsky said that Florida law gives the Legislature no authority whatsoever to pick the electors. Florida law expressly provides that the states' electors "shall" be chosen in an election held "on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November." The winner of the popular vote wins the electoral vote under Florida law. No other means is provided for determining the state's electoral votes. No Florida statute even hints at the Legislature having the authority to award the state's electoral votes.

Florida law, though, has very specific provisions for election contests and their resolution, Chemerinsky explained. Section 102.168 of Florida law allows any candidate or voter to contest election results once they have been certified by the Florida secretary of state. The statute is broadly worded to permit challenges to balloting and counting on "any cause ... or allegation which, if sustained, would show that a person other than the successful candidate was the person duly ... elected." The statute requires that courts hold an "immediate hearing" when there are contests.

Most important, according to Chemerinsky, the law gives the courts broad authority to fashion any remedy necessary. The statute states that the judge "may fashion such orders as he or she deems necessary to ... correct any alleged wrong, and to provide any relief appropriate under such circumstances." In other words, Chemerinsky stated that Florida law empowers its courts, not its Legislature, to resolve election contests and ultimately to determine who won.

Chemerinsky pointed out that Bush's attorneys wrongfully attacked the courts and their authority. The USC law professor said that "although it is understandable that they would prefer the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature to decide, this does not excuse their attack on the judicial process. The rule of law generally, and Florida law specifically, empowers the courts to decide disputes as to the law and contests as to elections. The authority for judicial review is basic to American democracy and it is wrong for Baker and others to denigrate it simply for the sake of political expediency. Whether they like it or not, the law is clear: Florida's courts will have the final say as to what votes count and thus as to whether Bush or Gore wins that state's electoral votes. This is exactly as it should be. As the United States Supreme Court declared long ago in 1803, in Marbury vs. Madison, ‘it is emphatically the province and the duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.' "

After Gore was delivered to major setbacks -- Judge Sauls refusing to allow the recounts to continue and the United States Supreme Court allowing Florida's highest court to determine if the secretary of state acted improperly in accepting late recounts -- the State Legislature slowed down its efforts to intervene. But the Legislature did file a friend-of-the-court brief with the Florida Supreme Court to make the case that the legislature, not the court, had the power to select the method by which Florida's electors are appointed. Once again, Democrats charged that the GOP-controlled Legislature's only purpose all along has been to serve as a backstop in case it appeared a Gore win was possible.

As the magic day of December 12 -- the deadline for Florida to pick a slate of electors -- approached, the Republican leadership in the State Legislature were pressured into reconsidering. Voting strictly along party lines, the legislative body voted to call a special session to convene on December 8, just enough time to pick electors to settle the presidential election as several lawsuits were still pending in a number of court.

John McKay, the president of the state Senate, said, "We're protecting Florida's 25 electoral votes and its six million voters." And Tom Feeney, speaker of the Florida House added, "I believe deeply that we have a duty to protect Florida's participation in the Electoral College."

The decision to call the special session was met with sharp criticism by Democrats. One legislator lashed out at her counterparts, charging that it was orchestrated by the Bush campaign. "All it lacked," she said," was a Dallas postmark."

Despite Secretary of State Harris' decision to award Florida's electoral votes to Bush, the Texas governor's lawyers continued to push ahead with their case before the United States Supreme Court. The debate centered around the decision of the Florida State Supreme Court to allow the hand counting of ballots to continue beyond the state's normal seven-day cutoff before the election was certified by Harris. And the case also focused on whether the Florida Legislature had the power to appoint its own slate of presidential electors.

In their appeals, Bush's lawyers claimed that the Florida State Supreme Court violated that statute because it "retroactively changed the law in Florida" which authorized the secretary of state to certify the winner of the presidential race on November 14. Gore's lawyers disputed that interpretation.

Meanwhile, the GOP-majority State Legislature moved ahead in preparing to pick its own slate of electors and ensuring a Bush victory whatever the outcome of the presidential court dispute. The vote in the House was 79 to 41. All the dissenting votes were cast by Democrats, but two Democrats crossed over to join the 77-member Republican majority in passing the measure. The State Senate scrapped a vote the following day, waiting to see if any court decisions would necessitate that they following the House in choosing Bush electors.

MORE APPEALS. At first Bush suffered a comparative minor setback when the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his bid to nullify hundreds of hand-counted Florida ballots. The court upheld a federal judge who earlier had rejected his request to immediately halt the recounts. Those manual tallies had cut Bush's lead from 930 votes to 537 out of 6 million cast statewide. In rejecting his appeal, the judges were quoted in the New York Times (December 7, 2000) as ruling that Bush was "suffering no serious harm, let alone irreparable harm" from the hand count, since he was certified the winner "notwithstanding the inclusion of manually recounted ballots" from Volusia and Broward counties. Additionally, the judges said that "even if manual recounts were to resume pursuant to a state court order, it is wholly speculative as to whether the results of those recounts may eventually place Vice President Gore ahead."

As soon as Gore's attorneys received the highest court's verdict, they appealed to Florida's highest court which immediately ordered lawyers for both sides to file briefs by the next day. The state court responded very quickly to the justices' decision by adding a few sentences and reissuing its 40-page opinion.

Gore faced two major hurdles in his last attempt for the White House. His attorneys argued that the only way to prove that he was the actual winner in Florida was to count the roughly 14,000 disputed ballots from Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties. Only days before, Leon County Circuit Judge Sauls had ruled that said Gore had failed to demonstrate "a reasonable probability" that, even if further hand counts were ordered, the election result would be reversed.

But Gore's attorneys argued that Judge Sauls' conclusion was wrong. They contended that he had failed to count any of the ballots that the vice president contended would have shown that hundreds of potential votes were excluded from the official November 26 tally that certified Bush the winner.

According to the Los Angeles Times (December 6, 2000), Gore's legal team had to prove to the State Supreme Court that Judge Sauls drew two erroneous conclusions. First, there was the legal argument. Judge Sauls concluded that under the Florida contest procedures, the state courts could overrule the actions of local canvassing boards -- for instance by ordering the further recounts that Gore was requesting -- only if the local officials abused their discretion. Second, there was the factual contention. Gore's lawyers argued that even if the courts were to take all the steps that Gore has urged -- including authorizing new recounts in Miami-Dade County and reexamining 3,300 disputed ballots in Palm Beach County -- the vice president did not demonstrate the "reasonable probability" that he would gain enough votes to erase Bush's lead.

Gore's attorneys said that they were not so much asking the State Supreme Court to reverse Judge Sauls as they were requesting it to reexamine their major argument in the case: that enough legal votes had been excluded, and enough illegal votes included, in the certified result to "place in doubt the result of the election." However, to reach that conclusion, the State Supreme Court had to decide that Judge Sauls misread the law in his own judgment rejecting Gore's contest. More specifically, Gore's lawyers argued that Judge Sauls drew an erroneous conclusion when he insisted that the Miami-Dade County canvassing board was within its authority not to complete the manual recount it began in mid-November. They maintained that claimed that Judge Sauls misread Florida law by arguing that the Palm Beach County canvassing board had the final word on which ballots contained evidence of "voter intent" to support Bush or Gore.

Gore asked that the results of the partially completed hand counts in both Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties be included in the final statewide tally; that would have brought him an additional 346 votes. He also asked Judge Sauls to reverse Nassau County's decision to certify its results from election night rather than its first automatic recount. That would have brought Gore an additional 51 votes. Gore also argued that he could have acquired hundreds of new votes by finishing the hand count in Miami-Dade, and by reassessing some 3,300 ballots on which the Palm Beach County canvassing board said it found no evidence of "voter intent." If the court had granted those two requests, Gore aides believe, they could have gained 500 to 1,200 more votes -- for a total net gain of 900 to 1,600 votes.

On the other hand, Bush attorneys said that the courts could intervene only if they found that the local canvassing boards abused their discretion. And they maintained that the State Supreme Court could not order Miami-Dade County to complete its count, since it refused to do so in an earlier challenge brought by Gore. The Bush legal team also argued that Gore had failed to demonstrate a "reasonable probability" that he could gain enough votes to overcome Bush's lead.

During the arguments Gore's attorney Boies had to answer questions from five of the seven justices about whether the court had a proper role in the appeal, whether it could legitimately overrule the trial judge who ruled decisively against, and whether the court could count disputed ballots from only a few counties. Chief Justice Wells said the state law stated that a circuit court clould hear contests of elections and did not say whether they can be appealed. He noted that the United States Supreme Court had given complete power to state legislatures to set election rules. He asked Bois, "Why is not judicial review given to the circuit court and not this court?" Gore's lawyer replied that the United States Constitution certainly did not intend for the legislature to act as a judicial body on election matters, only to set basic laws. He said that the case could be appealed like any other.

Justice Leander J. Shaw Jr. repeatedly asked whether the court was in any position to overrule the findings of fact by the lower court judge, N. Sanders Sauls, who issued a sweeping ruling against Gore's contest three days earlier. Justice Shaw asked, "When you put on experts and the judge listens to these experts and then he makes a determination based upon that, normally isn't that a question of fact?" Boies responded in the affirmative and added that Judge Sauls had both ignored important testimony and misinterpreted the law. He had refused to even look at the 14,000 punch card ballots that the Democrats believe could reveal votes for Gore if they were manually counted, Boies said that even though the ballots were his side's most important evidence. On the other side of the aisle, Bush's lawyer Barry Richard faced less intense questioning from two justices about the lower court's refusal to examine the disputed ballots.

Gore's fate -- at least for the moment -- rested in the hands of Florida's highest court.