I really want to read the book discussed in this article by its author Lance deHaven-Smith, an academic expert on Florida elections, electoral trends, and elections law. He’s written a book on the Florida debacle in 2000. He makes several really interesting points just in the interview, some directly related to the 2000 election and some not.
1. There were 175,000 spoiled ballots. Most of those were not the famous “undervotes” with hanging chads, etc. About 2/3rds were “overvotes” where the ballot was marked for two candidates. From his sampling, it appears that a large portion of those were ballots where Al Gore was selected and then written in, too. Black voters in Florida so often have found their votes disqualified on minor technicalities that they have a tendency to try to make extra sure that their intent is clear. Gore “overvotes” outnumber Bush “overvotes” by nearly 3 to 1.
2. The political elites on both sides no longer really respect democracy and the need to put it ahead of partisan interests, etc. Politics has become more of a win at all costs game in recent decades.
3. The GOP knows that Florida’s demographic trends are working against it. They have a vested interest in seeing that votes aren’t counted, especially when they know those votes are coming from minority precincts. Katherine Harris’s attempt to make the legal standard for a valid vote murky ran counter to all sorts of case law on the subject. Under precedents well established in Florida law, any ballot where Gore’s name was selected and written in should have been counted as vote for Gore because the intent of the voter was clear. When it became clear that their attempts at subverting Florida law wouldn’t stop the votes from being counted and that the legal standards for counting votes was quite clear, despite media portrayals, they went to the partisan U.S. Supreme Court and got it to put the election on ice.
Since there was no way for the court to do that and be consistent with its own rulings and judicial philosophy, they stipulated that the ruling was a one off that would set no precedent for future courts. Gore, doing what our own political tradition would dictate as the right thing, accepted the ruling. And that, too, related to part of what deHaven-Smith wsa saying. Once you get to that stage where one or both sides is willing to do whatever is necessary to win, it becomes an escalating arms race. Gore may have been willing to just submit. In a similar case in the future, Democrats can lay down and take it again or they can escalate. Both are bad for democracy.
