The 2000 Presidential Election of George W. Bush: The Difficult Birth of a Presidency

Abstract

How did Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush emerge fron the presidential election of 2000 as the nation’s forty-third president? In the most immediate sense, the answer in one word is Florida. Florida was the pivotal state. Its 25 electoral votes determined the national electoral vote winner and its popular vote division was almost perfectly divided betweer Bush and Democratic presidential contender Al Gore. The near perfect divi sion of the state’s vote was about the only thing near perfect in determining whether Bush or Gore would receive the state’s crucial electoral votes A variety of disputes, regarding issues from ballot design to whether papei ballots were properly punched and the absence of clear-cut standards in place prior to election day, were all part of what became the Florida fiasco. Witt the election hanging in the balance, the Gore campaign challenged the initia vote count that narrowly awarded the state to Bush. In the end, the contend ing sides resorted to the courts to resolve the dispute and they did, upholding the certified vote count of a Bush plurality. Democrats would charge that a Republican-dominated U.S. Supreme Court intervened inappropriately to prevent a recount of Florida’s votes in several counties ordered by the Supreme Court of Florida state. Republicans countercharged that the U.S Supreme Court properly prevented an activist Florida state Supreme Court from usurping the constitutional powers of Florida’s state legislature and conducting a highly selective recount with arbitrary standards adopted after the election had been held.1