The Presidential Election of 2000

The presidential election of the 2000s came down to George H. Bush, the republican candidate, and Al Gore, the democratic candidate. With 270 votes electoral votes needed to win the election, it was an extremely close vote, and, as a result, came down to only one state: Florida. Based on exit polls in Florida, the news media declared Gore the winner, but as the actual votes were tallied, Bush appeared to command the lead. When 85 percent of the vote had been counted, news networks declared Bush the winner, though election results in a few heavily Democratic counties had yet to be tallied. Disputes erupted over the accuracy and reliability of election technology in the state, with confusion over “butterfly ballots” (ballots that have names on both the left and right sides of the paper), punch card voting machines, and “hanging chads” (punch card ballots that were only partially punched). The issue brought attention to how unclear the ballots were and how there were many votes going unregistered. These convoluted ballot designs led to calls for election and voting reforms.
     The result in Florida was so close as to trigger a statewide mandatory machine recount according to the Florida Election Code. The Gore campaign then requested that the disputed ballots in four counties be recounted by hand. The Florida Supreme Court extended the deadline for the recount and ordered a manual recount. The Bush campaign appealed the decision, and as a result, the US Supreme Court ordered that the recount be stopped. The incomplete recount was therefore halted, and Bush was declared to be President-elect. 
     As a result, this election has been one of the closest and most controversial elections in US history. It has kept us wondering, "What if they had finished the recount? Then, who would have won?" but we will never know.