Bush Wins Presidency: Supreme Court Decides Election

Americans went to bed on election night, November 7, 2000, without knowing who their next president would be, and the uncertainty lasted 36 days. The contest between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore came down to Florida, where the initial count showed Bush leading by fewer than 2,000 votes out of nearly six million cast. The margin was so thin that it triggered an automatic machine recount, which narrowed Bush's lead to 327 votes and launched the most contentious electoral dispute since 1876. The problems in Florida were systemic. Palm Beach County's confusing "butterfly ballot" design caused an estimated 2,000 Gore supporters to accidentally vote for Pat Buchanan. Thousands of ballots in predominantly Black precincts were rejected by aging punch-card machines that failed to fully punch through, leaving the infamous "hanging chads" and "dimpled chads" that election officials tried to interpret by hand. Felony disenfranchisement laws had removed an estimated 600,000 Floridians from the rolls. Gore requested manual recounts in four heavily Democratic counties. The legal battle escalated through Florida's courts, with the Florida Supreme Court ordering a statewide recount of all "undervotes," ballots where machines had detected no presidential choice. Bush's legal team, led by James Baker and Theodore Olson, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. On December 12, the Court ruled 5-4 in Bush v. Gore that the recount violated the Equal Protection Clause because different counties were using different standards to evaluate ballots. The majority further held that no constitutionally valid recount could be completed before the December 12 safe harbor deadline, effectively ending the contest. Gore conceded the following day. Bush won Florida's 25 electoral votes and the presidency by an Electoral College margin of 271-266, despite losing the national popular vote by over 500,000 votes. The decision remains one of the most debated in Supreme Court history.