Cliffhanger: the presidential election of 2000: how a candidate won but still lost.

A month after the voting, there still wasn't a winner. Time magazine called it "the wildest election in history." Today, Americans are still arguing over who really won the presidential election of 2000.

Everyone expected it to be close. As Election Day, November 7, approached, Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic candidate, and Republican George W. Bush, Governor of Texas, were running neck and neck in the public-opinion polls.

The two best-known third-party candidates had no chance of winning. But if the Green Party's Ralph Nader took enough liberal votes away from Gore, or the Reform Party's Patrick Buchanan took conservative votes from Bush, anything could happen.

Omelette on the Face

Then came election night. As usual, the TV networks competed to be the first to project the winner in each state. The drama began about 7:50 ET, when the networks announced that Gore would carry Florida. A few hours later, they took it back: Florida was too close to call.

As the night passed, one state after another fell into the Bush or Gore column. Each side inched closer to the 270 electoral votes needed to win in the Electoral College. Finally, it became clear: Neither candidate could make it without Florida's 25 electoral votes. Whoever carried Florida would be the next President.

At 2:16 a.m., the networks projected that Bush had won Florida. It looked as if the election was over. Vice President Gore called Governor Bush to concede, or admit defeat. Republicans began celebrating. Less than an hour later, though, the networks again said Florida was too close to call. Gore called Bush back and withdrew his concession.

"The networks were embarrassed," said a weary Tom Brokaw, an NBC News anchor. "We don't just have egg on our face. We have an omelette."

Hand-to-Hand Combat

Out of more than 6 million ballots cast in Florida, Bush was ahead by only 1,784 votes. Under state law, the votes would have to be recounted. But as voters across the state began to speak out, the situation became much more complicated.

Voters in heavily Democratic Palm Beach County, many of them senior citizens, said they were confused by their punch-hole "butterfly" ballots and had mistakenly voted for Buchanan. More than 19,000 people had spoiled their ballots by voting for President twice. Ten thousand more ballots could not be read by the vote-counting machines at all because they had been punched too lightly.

In Duval County, another confusing ballot led to the discounting of more than 20,000 votes, many of which were cast by African-Americans in Democratic strongholds. Some people also said they were not allowed to vote because their names were on inaccurate lists of "possible felons."

Almost immediately, Florida became a battleground of lawyers. Gore's lawyers argued that machines could not correctly read the ballots. They demanded recounts by hand in four large counties. Bush's lawyers tried to stop the hand recounts. Machines were less prone to error, they said. Republicans charged that Democrats wanted to keep counting until they got the result they wanted.

The Florida Supreme Court allowed the recounts. But a Leon County judge ruled that Bush's victory could be certified (made official) without them. The Florida Supreme Court overruled him. The rulings went back and forth.

"This is hand-to-hand combat, every single moment," said one" Gore campaign staffer.

The battle went on for weeks. In all, nearly 50 lawsuits were filed. Angry demonstrators for both sides filled the streets outside courtrooms. Commentators dominated the nation's airwaves, America watched--fascinated, disgusted, or both.

The Court Speaks

Finally, on December 12, all the court cases were silenced with one blow from the U.S. Supreme Court. Bush campaign officials had appealed the Florida Supreme Court's last decision to allow hand counts. Now, by a 5-4 vote, the Court ruled, in the case of Bush v. Gore, that manual recounts were unconstitutional and that the recounts must stop.

Democrats protested the decision as a partisan ruling by Justices appointed by Republican Presidents. On the Court itself, the close vote revealed a bitter split among the Justices. Justice John Paul Stevens, who was in the minority, said that the real loser of the election was "the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of the law."

But 36 days after the election, it was all Over. Gore conceded again on December 13, and Bush reached out to Democrats. "Whether you voted for the or not," he said, "I will do my best to serve your interests."

The Dust Settles

In the final tally (count), Bush won Florida by a margin of only 537 votes. If even a fraction of Ralph Nader's 97,488 votes in Florida had gone to Gore, the Democrats would have won. Other states had margins that were nearly as thin.

Although Gore drew about half a million more popular votes in the country overall, Bush won in the Electoral College, 271 to 266. It was only the fourth time in the nation's history that a candidate had won the popular vote but still lost the election.

The 2000 election sparked heated debates in the country--about the Electoral College, voting methods, and the way television networks call elections. For many, the controversy will continue. As one Florida bumper sticker put it: "Don't blame me. I think I voted for Gore."

ELECTION WORDS POWER BOX

* project: to predict a vote before all votes are counted

* partisan: unfairly or blindly favoring one party

Your Turn

WORD MATCH
1. partisan   A. make official
2. project    B. count
3. concede    C. admit defeat
4. certify    D. favoring one
                 party
5. tally      E. predict

THINK ABOUT IT

Should the U.S. Supreme Court have stopped the manual recount of ballots in Florida? Why or why not?

RELATED ARTICLE: Republican president and democratic vice president?

David B Rush, 13

Scarsdale (N.Y.) Middle School,

8th grade

Tim Russert, moderator of NBC's Meet the Press, has an interesting idea: What if each candidate in the upcoming presidential election were to earn 269 electoral votes from a total of 538? The next President and Vice President could be from different parties!

To understand how this might happen, it helps to study the 2000 election results. Republican George W. Bush beat Democrat Al Gore in the Electoral College by a narrow margin, 271 to 266. (This adds up to only 537 electoral votes. An elector in Washington, D.C., who had been pledged to Gore, decided to abstain from voting. Such "faithless" electors are rare in U.S. history.)

In this year's election, if Bush wins the same states that he did four years ago, and John Kerry wins the same states that Gore did, Bush will win 278 to 260. This is because a shift in population, based on the 2000 census, has led to a change in the number of electoral votes apportioned (assigned) to some states.

But Kerry has a chance to pick up two states that Gore did not win in 2000: West Virginia and New Hampshire, lf this were to happen, Bush and Kerry would be locked in a tie: 269 to 269.

According to the U.S. Constitution, the House of Representatives would then elect the President, and the Senate would elect the Vice President.

Here, things get even trickier. If the House remains under Republican control, as it is likely to do, then Bush would be re-elected. But if Democrats were to regain a majority in the Senate, they would probably elect Senator John Edwards as the next Vice President.

"You could have George Bush, Republican, President, and John Edwards, Democrat, Vice President," Russert says excitedly.

While such a scenario is unlikely, Russert finds the thought of it "pretty interesting." I'll say.

AMERICAN HISTORY

* OBJECTIVE

Students should understand

* a presidential candidate can win the popular vote but still lose the election.

* WORDS TO KNOW

project: to predict an election's outcome before all votes are counted * partisan: unfairly or blindly favoring one party.

* TEACHING STRATEGY

Ask students: "What are some benefits and drawbacks to the Electoral College?"

* BACKGROUND

In November 2001, a review of more than 175,000 disputed Florida votes by news organizations did not settle the Florida controversy. By some methods of counting, Bush still would have won; by others, Gore would have. One thing everyone did agree on: confusing ballot designs in counties such as Miami-Dade and Duval led to thousands of spoiled votes.

* CRITICAL THINKING

COMPREHENSION: How did Ralph Nader affect the outcome of the 2000 presidential election? (Ralph Nader drew thousands of votes away from Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore. At the least, Nader may have kept Gore from winning Florida--thus costing him the election.)

MAKING COMPARISONS: What were the Gore and Bush campaigns' arguments regarding the recount of Florida's ballots? (Gore's lawyers argued that machines could not correctly read the disputed ballots and demanded manual recounts. Bush's lawyers said that manual recounting would be too prone to error.)

* ACTIVITY

WHO REALLY WON? POLL: Instruct students to conduct a poll of adults, asking opinions about who really won the 2000 presidential election. Students should write a brief summary of their findings, and create graphs to present numerical data.

STANDARDS

SOCIAL STUDIES, GRADES 5-8

* Power, authority, and governance: How the 2000 presidential election resulted in a dispute over how to count the popular votes in Florida.

* Individuals, groups, and institutions: How the 2000 presidential election was ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

RESOURCES

PRINT

* Sergis, Diana K., Bush v. Gore: Controversial Presidential Election Case (Enslow Publishers, 2003). Grades 5-8.

* Italia, Bob, Election 2000: A Lesson in Civics (Checkerboard Library, 2001). Grades 5-8.

GROLIER WEB SITE KEY WORD

* Election 2000

WEB SITES

* Election 2000 www.c-span.org/campaign2000/

* CNN Election 2000 Archive www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/

Word Match, p. 20

1. D 2. E 3. C 4. A 5. B