George W. Bush, et al. v. Albert Gore, commonly known as Bush v. Gore, was a controversial U.S. Supreme Court case heard on December 11, 2000. The case decided the outcome of the 2000 presidential election between Texas Governor George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore. In a 7-2 opinion, the court ordered that a ballot recount then being conducted in certain counties in Florida was to be stopped due to lacking a consistent standard. The court further declared, in a 5-4 vote, that there was insufficient time to establish standards for a new recount that would meet Florida’s deadline for certifying electors. The ruling in effect awarded Bush the presidency.

The election in question took place on November 7, 2000. Under the Electoral College system, each state votes for the president separately: a victor is then declared in each state, and the victor in the state wins a number of “electoral votes” equal to the state’s number of representatives in the House of Representatives and the Senate. At the end of the nationwide ballot count, Gore led Bush 266 – 246 in the electoral vote. 270 votes were required for victory: Florida, with 25 electoral votes, did not have an official victor because the result was within the margin of error for machine counting; Bush had the lead following the machine count, by a very small margin.

On November 8, 2000, the Florida Division of Elections reported that Bush won with 48.8% of the vote in Florida, a margin of victory of 1,784 votes. The margin of victory was less than 0.5% of the votes cast, so a statutorily-mandated, automatic machine recount occurred. On November 10, with the machine recount finished in all but one county, Bush’s margin of victory had decreased to 327. According to author Jeffrey Toobin, later analysis showed that a total of 18 counties, accounting for a quarter of all votes cast in Florida did not carry out the legally mandated machine recount, but no one from the Gore campaign ever challenged the notion that the machine recount had been completed. Florida’s election laws allow a candidate to request a county to conduct a manual recount, and Gore requested manual recounts in four Florida counties: Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade, which are counties that traditionally vote Democratic and would be expected to garner more votes for Gore.

Bush, represented by Theodore Olson, charged that the recounts in Florida violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Because the votes were being counted unevenly, with standards varying from county to county and recounts in counties where he could have been likely to have gained votes not even being conducted, Bush argued, the decision went against the language in the Constitution.

Gore, represented by David Boise, responded that the Florida Supreme Court had done everything it could do to ensure equal treatment of both parties, and that requiring all ballots to be treated in the same fashion would require a uniform federal standard for counting votes, something that had never been established. Gore also claimed that ending the recounts was not an equitable way to settle the dispute: instead, the Court needed to establish a standard by which the votes should be counted, and then let the ballots are counted by that standard.

An election is a formal decision making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representatives democracy operates since the 17^th century. Elections may fill the office in the legislature, sometimes in the executive and judiciary and for regional and local government.

In 2000, the United States presidential election was one of the closest and most controversial presidential elections in history. It was the fourth election in which the electoral vote did not reflect the popular vote. A month of recounts and court challenges followed, culminating in the Supreme Court case Bush vs. Gore.  The race was incredibly close throughout the entire campaign and called for a month of recounts, and court challenges.  Based on the conclusion of the court case, Bush v. Gore, George W. Bush was announced as the winner over Vice President Al Gore due to 537 votes cast in Florida.  Before any winner was announced, however, they had to campaign.  Both men focused their campaigns on domestic issues like the price of prescription drugs, education, financial reform, and Social Security.  Both candidates suggested that their plans would decrease the national deficit.  Gore began his campaign against Bush with a strong background.

The fact that he served as vice president for eight years under President Bill Clinton during a time when the economy was thought to still be doing well is part of what helped him win the Democratic primary so easily.  However, because of the scandal surrounding Clinton’s impeachment in 1998, Gore had no interest in using that information as a basis for his election.  As it was, Clinton didn’t do much to help Gore in his campaign anyway.  Gore’s goals were to balance adopting the strong economy from the previous administration while steering away from the moral mistakes of Clinton.

For his part, Bush emerged from the Republican primary fairly untouched.  After all, the fact that he was the son of a former president certainly gave him a strong hand.  Plus, he served successfully as the governor of Texas just prior to running for president, which earned him votes from many Latino voters, a demographic that Republicans have always struggled to earn votes from.  The press immediately began to attack his tendency to mix up or mispronounce words which sometimes put him a step backwards in debates. The most famous part about the United States presidential election of 2000 was the recounting of votes in Florida.  There has been an amount of speculation as to what might have happened differently if recounts had occurred under different rules.  Multiple scenarios were published in various newspapers.  Some conclude that Bush still would have won while others suggest that Gore could have under different circumstances.  Speculation was useless, however, because the votes stood thus: Bush: 50,460,110 popular votes (47.9%); 271 Electoral College votes.  Gore: 51,003,926 popular votes (48.4%); 266 Electoral College votes.  Based on the numbers, Bush was made the new president by an obviously slim margin in the Electoral College.