This week on Hashtag History, we will be discussing the 2000 Presidential Election Recount, also known as Bush v. Gore, since this case did go all the way up to the Supreme Court who was ultimately responsible for making the landmark decision about who would become the president of the United States that fateful year.
Why did this election go all the way up to the Supreme Court? Well, that would be because the results of the 2000 presidential election in the State of Florida showed that Republican nominee George W. Bush had beat Democrat nominee Al Gore by a mere 537 votes (537 votes across the whole state!!!), automatically triggering a recount due to how close those results were. Al Gore requested a manual recount due to several irregularities across counties in Florida about which ballots were considered valid and which were not. He only requested this of some counties though, causing the Supreme Court to take the case and decide that the manual recounts should be halted because – by their logic – targeting specific counties disenfranchised voters. Gore was forced to concede Florida to Bush and, with that, Bush – who did not win the popular vote – received the required electoral votes and became the 43rd President of the United States. This was not decided, however, until December 12th of that year. The results of the presidential election were not known until thirty-five days after Election Day!
There is so much more than all of that to talk about. Like the fact that – oh, I don’t know – the Governor of Florida at the time was Bush’s brother. Or the fact that the Supreme Court explicitly said in their final decision that this case was not to be applied to any future cases and should not be used as precedent. Which, like, isn’t that the point of the US Supreme Court? To set precedent?
Join us to learn all about all of that and so much more!
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- Rachel and Leah
Editor: Alex Perez
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