Is this sick or what? November 3rd 2000 over 100 million American voters took to the polls unaware that their votes wouldn’t matter. Al Gore won the popular vote and George W. Bush won the electoral vote; or did he? Something was not right in the state of Florida. The contest to become the 43rd President of the United States became a Supreme Court dispute over the way we vote. The guy who got the most votes in the U.S. and in Florida and under our Constitution (Al Gore) will lose to America’s second choice (George W. Bush) that won the all-important 5-4 Supreme Court vote (2).
How could this happen and was it fair? How does America’s subsequent choice become president? For one to fully understand what occurred last November and December you must know how the Electoral College works.
Under the Electoral College system, American voters do not elect the president directly. Citizen’s votes help elected state officials decide which nominee receives their state’s electoral votes. 100 senators, 435 representatives and 3 votes awarded to the District of Columbia make up all 538 electoral votes. Our 535 elected officials are, in theory, supposed to reflect the ideas of their constituents. Unfortunately there is not a law that calls for electors to vote according to their state’s popular vote. The 2000 election is an example of how it is possible for a candidate to win the nation-wide popular vote and not the win the presidency. According to cnn.com Al Gore won the popular vote with 50,456,169 ballots and George W. Bush only received 50,996,116(1).
The Essay on Electoral Vote President States Popular
... electoral vote, although President Cleveland won the popular vote. It has once again happened, as George Bush defeated Al Gore in the 2000 election. Al Gore won the popular vote ... margins, the candidate could lose the popular vote and still win the electoral vote. Three United States Presidents have already won based upon this scenario. In ...
Al Gore won a lot of states by a landslide victory but all those popular votes add up to however many electoral votes a state had. George W. Bush, on the other hand, barely won some states but was still given all of the electoral votes. This may not seem fair but this is how the system works and it offered a close outcome in the 2000 election. Another possible reason why the election was so close is because of the popularity of third party candidate Ralph Nader. Like other third party candidates in history Nader offered an alternative to the Republican and Democratic Parties. This election could have been close because of Nader drawing votes away from both Bush and Gore. This is nothing new though; it has happened on at least two other occasions in history. An example of this is when Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party helped the Democrats wrest the White House from 20 years of unchallenged Republican supremacy. To a lesser degree this may also have occurred in 1992, as Ross Perot’s candidacy probably hurt George Bush more than it hurt Bill Clinton (3).
Third Parties should not be overlooked especially in close elections such as the one last year. Now that you know how the Electoral College works we can take a closer look into what exactly happened in last year’s election.
As previously stated, Al Gore won the nation-wide popular vote and George W. Bush won the electoral vote; therefore making Bush the legitimate president. However, the election was so close that every electoral vote counted. Al Gore received 266 electoral votes and George W. Bush won the race with 271 (This is 1 vote more than he needed to take the majority of 270) votes (2).
However, there was a problem with the ballets in several counties in Florida. Something was amiss as the media prematurely announced that Al Gore had won Florida, they later came back and said George W. Bush had acquired the Florida’s electoral votes. I recall waking up the next morning learning that America was still trying to determine the nation’s 43rd president. This is when the courts got involved.
Florida’s Supreme Court decided on November 21, 2000 that the votes cast should be recounted (6).
The Essay on Supreme Court Florida Law Gore
INTERPRETING AN EVENT (Rewrite) The 2000 Presidential Election marked an unforgettable event. On November 7, 2000 more than 100 million Americans voted for president. Democratic nominee, Vice-President Al Gore, was anticipating victory once the major television networks, early on election night, projected him to be the winner in the crucial state of Florida (Fitzpatrick 1). Within hours, however, ...
Al Gore was quoted saying, ”Democracy is the winner tonight (5).” Florida’s Supreme Court made the right decision; in essence they were saying a vote is a vote no matter if it’s for a Republican or a Democrat. In a country where we stress voting as a patriotic duty it is imperative that our government makes sure every vote is accepted. Whether a ballet is dimpled chad, hanging chad, or pregnant chad the intention of the voter is evident then the vote should be counted. Nonetheless, the United States Supreme Court disagreed and intervened the Florida recount.
The Florida Supreme Court was in the process of recounting votes and would have met their deadline if Justice Scalia and four of his fellow justices of the United States Supreme Court hadn’t stepped in saying some of the counts may not be legal (2).
These five judges, along with Bush’s lawyers helped slow down the recount causing Florida to miss the December 12th cut-off date for congress to dispute the results of the election (2).
The job of the Supreme Court is to make a decision without influence. It appears that the five justices that voted in favor to stop the Florida recount we predisposed to do so, whether it was right or wrong. It’s possible that some of the justices favored George W. Bush. Scalia’s two sons are both lawyers working for Bush and Thomas’s wife is collecting applications for people who want to work in the Bush administration (2).
There are blatant suggestions of political partiality. The five justices that voted to stop the recount are in a great deal of trouble. The Oregon Democratic Party sanctioned an urge to impeach the five U.S. Supreme Court justices for their decision (5).
This is the right thing to do considering these men decided the 43rd president. According to the Miami Herald, Gore won Florida by about 20,000 votes (excluding the butterfly ballot errors)(2).
According to Government Census in 1998, 18-24 year olds were the least likely to vote (4).
I wanted to prove the statistics wrong and voted for Ralph Nader in attempt to help him perform well enough in the polls so that the Green Party would receive more federal funding and also as an alternative to the Republicrats Bush and Gore. But some people need to be convinced that voting makes a difference. There have been many programs to try and get teens to vote such as MTV’s “Rock the Vote” and the World Wrestling Federation’s “Smack Down Your Vote”. However, following this election I believe that many people, along with myself, are questioning whether or not their vote matters. The 2000 election was decided in the Supreme Court, not by the people and not even by the Electoral College. Gore wasn’t the only person who was cheated; the people who went to the polls were the real losers. In essence, if the government cannot convince Americans that their votes matter, there’s going to be a poor turnout at the polls in the years to come. I would like to see the five Supreme Court justices who terminated the recount impeached. I signed an online petition (http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?insure&1) just for that reason. States are sovereign and the recount shouldn’t have even been a federal matter. It was wrong to step in and discontinue the re-tallying of the Florida votes. They should suffer the consequences of their malicious actions. Justice cannot be done; our president is George W. Bush and until at least 2004 it will remain this way because of the actions of five judges.
The Essay on Supreme Judicial Court Of Massachusetts, Barnstable
FACTS: On March 29, 1983, about 8:28 P.M., Patrolman Michael Aselton of the Barnstable police department was on radar duty at Old Stage Road in Centerville. He saw the defendant’s motorcycle speed by him and commenced pursuit in a marked police cruiser with activated warning devices. The defendant “realized a cruiser was behind him but did not stop because he was `in fear of his ...
