United States presidential election, 2000 Totally Explained

Everything about United States Presidential Election 2000 totally explained

The United States presidential election of 2000 was a contest between Democratic candidate Al Gore, then Vice President, and Republican candidate George W. Bush, governor of Texas and son of former president George H. W. Bush (1989-1993). Bush narrowly won the November 7 election, with 271 electoral votes to Gore's 266 (with one faithless elector abstaining in the official tally). The election featured a controversy over who won Florida's 25 electoral votes (and thus the presidency), the recount process in that state, and the unusual event that the losing candidate had received 543,895 more popular votes than the winner.
In the American system of presidential elections, the electoral vote determines the winner, and Bush won this count, although Gore received more votes (called the "popular vote"). This was the fourth time in American history that a candidate won the presidency without receiving a plurality of the popular vote; it also happened in the elections of 1824, 1876 and 1888.

Nominations

Democratic Party nomination

Democratic Party candidates Image:Senator Bill Bradley (D-NJ).jpg|Former Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey Image:Al Gore, Vice President of the United States, official portrait 1994.jpg|Vice President Al Gore of Tennessee

Numerous candidates for the Democratic nomination tested the waters, but only two serious candidates entered the contest: Vice President Al Gore of Tennessee and former Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey. Only Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone formed an exploratory committee.
   Gore had a strong base as the incumbent Vice President; Bradley received some endorsements but wasn't the candidate of a major faction or coalition of blocs. Running an insurgency campaign, Bradley positioned himself as the alternative to Gore, who was a founding member of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. While former basketball star Michael Jordan campaigned for him in the early primary states, Bradley announced his intention to campaign "in a different way" by conducting a positive campaign of "big ideas." He made the spending of the record-breaking budget surplus on a variety of social welfare programs to help the poor and the middle-class one of his central issues, along with campaign finance reform and gun control.
   Gore easily defeated Bradley in the primaries, largely because of the support given to Gore by the Democratic Party establishment and Bradley's poor showing in the Iowa caucus, where Gore successfully painted Bradley as aloof and indifferent to the plight of farmers in rural America. The closest Bradley came to a victory was his 50–46 loss to Gore in the New Hampshire primary.
   None of Bradley's delegates were allowed to vote for him so Gore won unanimously. Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman was nominated for Vice President by voice vote. Lieberman became the first Jewish American ever to be chosen for this position by a major party and many political commentators cited him as a "bold choice" for Vice President.
   Gore, as incumbent V.P., was supported by Clinton and despite Bradley's challenge was a safe front-runner. But some other prominent Democrats were mentioned as possible contenders, such as Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, Missouri Congressman Dick Gephardt, Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone, and famous actor and director Warren Beatty, who declined to run.

Potential vice-presidential candidates

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts

Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois

Senator Bob Graham of Florida

House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri

Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson of New Mexico

Governor Jim Hunt of North Carolina

Republican Party nomination

Republican Party candidates Image:Lamar Alexander official portrait.jpg|Former Governor and Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander of Tennessee Image:Gary_Bauer.jpg|Former Undersecretary of Education Gary Bauer of Kentucky Image:Pat Buchanan.jpg|Publisher and author Pat Buchanan of Virginia Image:George-W-Bush.jpeg|Governor George W. Bush of Texas Image:Elizabeth Dole official photo.jpg|Former Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina Image:Steve_Forbes.jpg|Owner and publisher Steve Forbes of New York Image:Orrin Hatch, official 110th Congress photo.jpg|Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah Image:JRKasich.jpg|Representative John Kasich of Ohio Image:Alan Keyes speech.jpg|Former Ambassador and conservative activist Alan Keyes of Maryland Image:John McCain official photo portrait.JPG|Senator John McCain of Arizona Image:Quayle.jpg|Former Vice President Dan Quayle of Indiana Image:Robert C Smith.jpg|Senator Robert C. Smith of New Hampshire Following Bob Dole's loss to Bill Clinton in the 1996 election, George W. Bush became the frontrunner, acquiring unprecedented funding and a broad base of leadership support, based on his governorship of Texas and the name-recognition and connections of the Bush family. Buchanan and Trump dropped out to run for the Reform Party nomination. Several aspirants withdrew before the Iowa Caucus, unable to secure funding and endorsements sufficient to remain competitive with Bush. These included Alexander, Dole, Kasich, Quayle, and Smith. Steve Forbes, who could self-finance, did compete in the early contests, but didn't do as well as he'd in 1996. By late February, Bauer, Forbes, and Hatch had all dropped out. That left Bush, McCain, and Keyes as the only candidates still in the race.
   Bush, the governor of Texas, the second-largest state in the Union, the son of a former president, and the favored candidate of the Christian right, was portrayed in the media as the establishment candidate. McCain, with the support of many moderate Republicans and Independents, portrayed himself as a crusading insurgent who focused on campaign reform.
   McCain won a 48%-30% victory over Bush in the New Hampshire primary and seized the attention of the media. In the South Carolina primary, however, Bush soundly defeated McCain. Some credited Bush's win to the fact that it was the first major primary in which only registered Republicans could vote, which negated McCain's strong advantage among independents. Some McCain supporters blamed it on a campaign of dirty tricks such as push polling, including the false suggestion that McCain fathered an African-American child out of wedlock, perpetrated against McCain by his political enemies. Whatever the real reason, McCain's loss in South Carolina stopped his momentum cold. Although McCain won a few additional primaries, Bush took the majority and handily won the nomination at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.
   The tally was as follows:

George W. Bush 1601 77%

John McCain 243 12%

Uncommitted 205 10%

Alan Keyes 14 1%

Steve Forbes 2 0%

Gary Bauer 1 0%

McCain finally endorsed Bush, and gave a strong speech at the convention.

Vice Presidential candidates

Governor Bush told former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney to head up a commission to help select a running mate for him, but ultimately, Bush asked Cheney himself to be his running mate, and Cheney was nominated by voice vote. While the US Constitution doesn't specifically disallow a president and a vice-president from the same state, it does prohibit members of the electoral college from casting both of their votes for persons from the same state. Accordingly, Cheney—who had been a resident of Texas for nearly 10 years—changed his voting registration back to Wyoming. Had Cheney not done this, either he or Governor Bush would have forfeited their electoral votes from the Texas electors, a situation which—given the eventual razor-thin margin of victory for the Republicans that year—would have almost certainly resulted in Democratic Vice-President Lieberman serving under a Republican President Bush.
Other mentioned candidates:

Former HUD Secretary and 1996 V.P. nominee Jack Kemp of New York

Senator Robert C. Smith of New Hampshire

Former Governor and White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu of New Hampshire

Governor John Engler of Michigan

Senator John Warner of Virginia

Governor Jim Gilmore of Virginia

Governor Paul Cellucci of Massachusetts

Governor Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin

Representative John Thune of South Dakota John McCain

Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona

Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee

Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio

Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska

Representative Lindsey Graham of South Carolina

Representative Mark Sanford of South Carolina

Representative Peter T. King of New York

Staten Island Borough President Guy V. Molinari Steve Forbes

Representative Roscoe G. Bartlett of Maryland

Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell Alan Keyes

Representative Tom Coburn of Oklahoma Orrin Hatch

Senator Bob Bennett of Utah Lamar Alexander

Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas

Former Governor Terry Branstad of Iowa Dan Quayle

Former Governor Carroll Campbell of South Carolina John Kasich

Mike DeWine (initially)

Senator George Voinovich of Ohio

Representative John Boehner of Ohio

Reform Party nomination

Reform Party candidates

John B. Anderson of Florida, former U.S. Representative for the 16th Congressional District of Illinois, former Independent Presidential candidate
David L. Boren of Oklahoma, former U.S. Senator
Patrick J. Buchanan of Virginia, former speechwriter and Senior Advisor to President Richard Nixon
Charles E. Collins of Georgia, former school board chairman from a rural Florida county
John Hagelin of Iowa, Ph.D., past and then-current Natural Law Party candidate
Ron Paul of Texas, U.S. Representative
Ross Perot of Texas, 1996 presidential nominee
Donald Trump of New York, billionaire real estate developer
Jesse Ventura of Minnesota, Governor
Lowell P. Weicker Jr. of Connecticut, former Governor

The nomination went to Pat Buchanan and runningmate Ezola Foster of California, over the objections of party-founder H. Ross Perot and despite a rump convention nomination of John Hagelin by the Perot faction (see Other nominations below). In the end, the Federal Election Commission sided with Buchanan, and that ticket appeared on 49 of 51 possible ballots.

Green Party nomination

Green Party candidates (External Link

)

The nomination went to Ralph Nader of Connecticut and Winona LaDuke of Minnesota, at the Green Party's National Nominating Convention in Denver, Colorado (External Link

). The Green Party appeared on 44 of 51 ballots.

Libertarian Party nomination

Libertarian Party candidates (External Link

)

The Libertarian Party's National Nominating Convention nominated Harry Browne of Tennessee and Art Olivier of California for Vice President. Browne was nominated on the first ballot and Olivier received the Vice Presidential nomination on the second ballot (External Link

). The Libertarian Party appeared on 50 of 51 ballots.

Constitution Party nomination

Constitution Party candidates

The nomination went to Howard Phillips of Virginia and Curtis Frazier of Missouri. The Constitution Party was on the ballot in 41 states.

Natural Law Party nomination

John Hagelin of Iowa and Nat Goldhaber of California The Natural Law Party was on 38 ballots.

The general election campaign

In the campaign, Bush criticized the Clinton administration policy in Somalia, where 18 Americans died in 1993 trying to sort out warring factions, and in the Balkans, where United States peacekeeping troops perform a variety of functions. "I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building". Bush said in the second presidential debate. Ralph Nader was the most successful of third-party candidates, drawing 2.74% of the popular vote. His campaign was marked by a traveling tour of "super-rallies"; large rallies held in sports arenas like Madison Square Garden, with retired talk show host Phil Donahue as master of ceremonies. After initially ignoring Nader, the Gore campaign made a big publicity pitch to (potential) Nader supporters in the final weeks of the campaign, downplaying Gore's differences with Nader on the issues and claiming that Gore's ideas were more similar to Nader's than Bush's were, noting that Gore had a better chance of winning than Nader. On the other side, the Republican Leadership Council ran pro-Nader ads in a few states in an effort to split the "left" vote. In the aftermath of the campaign, many Gore supporters claimed that many of Nader's voters would have supported Gore, thus siphoning off enough would-be Gore votes to throw the election to Bush. The sharpest differences among partisan groups came on the topic of morality. Already by 1992, Republicans were campaigning much more vigorously and vociferously than Democrats or independents on "hot button" social issues concerning what some proclaimed as the moral decay of society, in the form of permissive attitudes toward sex, abortion, gays and lesbians, and secularism. The difference grew larger by 2000, especially if one adds together the moral decay category and the category having to do with corruption and scandals in Washington. Morality was mentioned most frequently by Republicans as the "single most important problem" facing the nation. Therefore during his campaign Bush frequently referred to restoring moral integrity not only to the White House but to the nation as a whole. Gore on the other hand studiously avoided the Clinton scandals, as did Lieberman, even though Lieberman had been the first Democratic senator to denounce Clinton's misbehavior. Gore avoided appearing with Clinton, who was shunted to low visibility appearances in areas where he was still popular.
Both Vice-Presidential candidates Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman campaigned aggressively in the 2000 presidential election. Both camps made numerous campaign stops nationwide, often just missing each other such as when Cheney as well as Hadassah Lieberman and Tipper Gore attended Chicago's Taste of Polonia over Labor Day Weekend Cheney, who had been typecast as being "aloof" during most of the campaign was remarkably lively during his visit to Chicago where he rode the infamous L, danced the polka, served attendees kielbasa with stuffed cabbage and spoke in front of a cheering crowd by addressing them with the phrase Sto Lat

The election

As the returns came in on election night (November 7), it became clear that the presidential election was unusually close. Both Governor Bush and Vice President Gore had won roughly 48% of the national vote. With the exception of Florida, Bush carried the Southern states by comfortable margins and also secured wins in Ohio, Indiana, most of the rural Midwestern farming states, and most of the Rocky Mountain states. Gore balanced Bush by sweeping the Northeastern United States (with the sole exception of New Hampshire, which Bush won narrowly), most of the Upper Midwest, and the Pacific Coast states, including Washington, Oregon, and California. As the night wore on it became clear that while a handful of small-to-medium sized states, including Wisconsin and Iowa, were extremely close, it was the State of Florida that would decide the winner of the election. As the final national results were tallied the following morning, Bush had clearly won a total of 246 electoral votes, while Gore had won 255 votes (270 votes were needed to win). Two smaller states - New Mexico (5 electoral votes) and Oregon (7 electoral votes) - were still too close to call. It was Florida (25 electoral votes), however, that the news media focused their attention on. Mathematically, Florida's 25 electoral votes became the key to an election win for both candidates, and although both New Mexico and Oregon were declared in favor of Gore over the next few days, Florida's statewide vote took center stage because the state's winner would ultimately win the election. The outcome of the election wasn't known for more than a month after the balloting ended because of the extended process of counting and then recounting Florida's presidential ballots.

Florida

At approximately 7:50 p.m. EST on election day, 10 minutes before the polls closed in the largely Republican Florida panhandle, some television news networks declared that Gore had carried Florida's 25 electoral votes. They based this prediction substantially on exit polls. However, in the actual vote tally Bush began to take a wide lead early in Florida, and by 10 p.m. EST the networks had retracted their prediction of a Gore victory and placed Florida back into the "undecided" column. At approximately 2:30 am, with some 85% of the votes counted in Florida and Bush leading Gore by more than 100,000 votes, the networks declared that Bush had carried Florida and had, therefore, been elected President. However, most of the remaining votes to be counted in Florida were located in three heavily Democratic counties - Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach - and as their votes were reported Gore began to gain on Bush. By 4:30 am, after all votes were counted, Gore had narrowed Bush's margin to just over 2,000 votes, and the networks retracted their predictions that Bush had won Florida and the Presidency. Gore, who had privately conceded the election to Bush, now withdrew his concession and announced that he'd wait for a recount in Florida before any further action. After the first recount by the morning of Wednesday, November 8 Bush's margin in Florida had dwindled to about 500 votes, narrow enough to trigger a mandatory recount in that state. In addition, Gore asked for hand recounts in four counties (Broward, Miami Dade, Palm Beach, and Volusia), as provided under Florida state law. This set into motion a series of recounts (portions by machine, and portions by hand), questions about portions of the Florida vote, and finally lawsuits.
These ultimately resulted in a December 12 7-2 United States Supreme Court decision that the Florida Supreme Court's plan for recounting ballots was unconstitutional, as well as a 5-4 United States Supreme Court decision that ended the Florida recounts and allowed Florida to certify its vote. The vote was certified according to Florida state election law by Katherine Harris, the Republican Secretary of State who had been the Florida co-chair of Bush's campaign. Because Bush's younger brother, Jeb Bush, was the governor of Florida, there were allegations that Harris and Jeb Bush had manipulated the election to favor the governor's brother.

Post recount

After Florida was decided, Texas Governor George W. Bush became President-elect and began forming his transition committee. In a speech on December 13, Bush claimed he was reaching across party lines to bridge a divided America, stating that "the President of the United States is the President of every single American, of every race, and every background."
   On January 6, 2001, a joint-session of Congress met to certify the electoral vote. Twenty members of the House of Representatives, most of them Democratic members of the Congressional Black Caucus, rose one-by-one to file objections to the electoral votes of Florida. However, according to an 1877 law, any such objection had to be sponsored by both a representative and a senator. No senator would co-sponsor these objections, deferring to the Supreme Court's ruling. Therefore, Gore, who was presiding in his capacity as President of the Senate, ruled each of these objections out of order.
   Bush subsequently became the President-elect after the electoral votes from all 50 states and the District of Columbia were certified by the joint session of Congress. Bush took the oath of office on January 20, 2001.
   In the aftermath of the election, the first independent recount was conducted by The Miami Herald and USA Today. Counting only "undervotes" where no vote is detected by machine, and not considering "overvotes", such as when a voter marks a ballot for the same candidate using both the labeled space or punch-out and via the write-in space, Bush would have won in all legally requested recount scenarios, but a statewide recount would have given Gore a narrow victory.
   Additionally, The Media Consortium hired the National Opinion Research Center to examine 175,010 ballots that were never counted in Florida. (External Link

) The investigation took 8 months and cost $900,000. Their results showed that the winning candidate varied based on the method used to include or interpret ballots. For cases where all of their examiners agreed, the nine different recount scenarios resulted in Bush prevailing four times, and Gore prevailing in the other five. Ironically enough, under the recount rules initially requested by Gore, Bush would have won, and under the rules requested by Bush, Gore would have won.

National results

Though Gore came in second in the electoral vote, he received 543,895 more individual votes than Bush. Gore failed to win the popular vote in his home state, Tennessee, which both he and his father had represented in the Senate. Had he won Tennessee, he'd have won the election without Florida. Gore was the first major-party presidential candidate to have lost his home state since George McGovern lost South Dakota in 1972.

Source (Electoral and Popular Vote): Federal Elections Commission Electoral and Popular Vote Summary ^(a) One faithless elector from the District of Columbia, Barbara Lett-Simmons, abstained from voting in protest of the District's lack of voting representation in United States Congress. (D.C. has a non-voting delegate to Congress.) She had been expected to vote for Gore/Lieberman.
^(b)

State results
Close states are listed below:
States where margin of victory < 10%:

Florida, <0.0092%

New Mexico, 0.06%

Wisconsin, 0.22%

Iowa, 0.31%

Oregon, 0.44%

New Hampshire, 1.27%

Minnesota, 2.40%

Missouri, 3.34%

Ohio, 3.51%

Nevada, 3.55%

Tennessee, 3.86%

Pennsylvania, 4.17%

Maine, 5.12%

Michigan, 5.13%

Washington, 5.57%

Arkansas, 5.45%

Arizona, 6.28%

West Virginia, 6.33%

Louisiana, 7.67%

Virginia, 8.03%

Colorado, 8.36%
Aftermath

Voting machines
Since the Presidential Election was so close in Florida, the United States Government and state governments pushed for election reform to be prepared by the 2004 United States Presidential Election. Many of Florida's year 2000 election night problems stemmed from usability and ballot design factors with voting systems, including the potentially confusing "butterfly ballot." Many voters had difficulties with the paper based punch card voting machines and were either unable to understand the required process for voting or unable to perform the process. This resulted in an unusual amount of over votes (voting for more candidates than is allowed) and under votes (voting for fewer than the minimum candidates, including none at all). Many undervotes were potentially caused by either voter error or errors with the punch card paper ballots resulting in hanging, dimpled, or pregnant chads.
   A proposed solution to these problems was the installation of modern electronic voting machines. The United States Presidential Election of 2000 spurred the debate about election and voting reform, but it didn't end it.
Exit polling and declaration of vote winners
The Voter News Service's reputation was badly tarnished by its treatment of Florida's presidential vote in 2000. Breaking its own guidelines, VNS called the state as a win for Gore 12 minutes before polls closed in much of the state. Although much of the state is in the Eastern Time Zone, at the time VNS called the state for Gore, the Florida panhandle, which is in the Central Time Zone, hadn't yet closed their polls. More seriously, inconsistent polling results caused the VNS to change its call twice, first from Gore to Bush, and then to "too close to call". A subsequent attempt by VNS to use computer tallying during the 2002 congressional election was also a failure, and the VNS was disbanded.
More consequences
In the aftermath of the election, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was passed to help states upgrade their election technology in the hopes of preventing similar problems in future elections. Ironically, the electronic voting systems which many states purchased in order to comply with HAVA actually caused problems in the following presidential election of 2004.
   Some Democrats blamed third party candidate Ralph Nader for taking the election away from Gore. Nader received some 97,000 votes in Florida. According to the Washington Post, exit polls there showed that "47% of Nader voters would have gone for Gore if it had been a two-man race, and only 21% for Bush," which would have given Gore a margin of some 24,000 votes over Bush. Some Democrats claim that had Nader not run, Gore would have won both New Hampshire and Florida and won the election with 296 electoral votes. (He only needed one of the two to win.) Defenders of Nader, including Dan Perkins, argued that the margin in Florida was small enough that Democrats could blame any number of third-party candidates for the defeat, including "Workers World Party" candidate Monica Moorehead, who received 1,500 votes. Nader's reputation was still hurt by this perception, and may have hindered his future goals as an activist. For example, Mother Jones wrote, "For evidence of how rank-and-file liberals have turned against Nader, one need look no further than the empire he created. Public Citizen, the organization (Nader) founded in 1971, has a new fundraising problem—its founder. After the election, contributions dropped... When people inquire about Nader's relationship to the organization, Public Citizen sends out a letter that begins with a startling new disclaimer: 'Although Ralph Nader was our founder, he hasn't held an official position in the organization since 1980 and doesn't serve on the board. Public Citizen—and the other groups that Mr. Nader founded–act independently.'"
HBO film
The election is the subject of a 2008 made-for-TV movie directed by Jay Roach, produced by, and starring Kevin Spacey called Recount. It premiered on the HBO cable network on May 25, 2008 at 9pm est.

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