McFreedom

A friend (who is a Bush supporter but hangs out on a very leftist mailing list) and I got into a discussion the other day about whether or not Bush legitimately won in Florida. He was of the opinion that recounts had made it clear Bush lost; I was of the opinion it wasn't. I invented some memory about how we could both be right, but decided this morning to find the correct answer. After much wading through people complaining that Bush stole the election, here's what it looks like happened.

A bunch of Democrats in Florida did a poor job expressing their franchise. If all the people, all over the state, had voted correctly, they probably would've granted Gore another 25,000 - 50,000 votes - enough to handily give Gore the state (and the election). Of course, if you're going to engage in this kind of revisionism, it's quite possible to speculate that Bush lost other close states he should've won because of their local ballot issues. You can't just recount one state at a really high level of scrutiny and claim that would change the election.

Regardless, a complete, many-months recount was not what was on the table at the Supreme Court. The reason I remembered thinking that Bush had been vindicated in the end was that, under the standard the Gore team was advocating, he was. The Gore camp had asked the Florida Supreme Court to allow the "Lenient standard" in a by-hand recount, which would examine every chad for any hint that a voter had attempted to vote on it, and use it as a vote. The Federal Supreme Court stepped in and said, "That's changing the rules after the election, you can't do that," and the recount was stopped. This was the way Bush "stole" the election - the presumption being that, if the Supreme Court had done nothing, Gore would've won.

Well, it turns out that, under that standard, if that recount had gone forward, Gore would've lost by 1665 votes. Ironically, if the Supreme Court had done nothing, round about middle of December, the powers that be in Florida still would've called Bush the winner and we could've avoided four years of acrimony about this.

So, in Summary, Democrats feel Bush stole the election because "Under any scenario where all of the votes are counted, Gore won." Republicans feel he didn't because, even if Bush had done absolutely nothing in his defense the state of Florida still would've decided he won, anyway. There were no scenarios on the table where "all of the votes [were] counted." Again, it wouldn't surprise me that if you recounted all the votes in, say, New Mexico, you couldn't flip it to Bush. Since Gore's electoral college margin of victory with Florida would've been 1 vote, if you flip a single state to Bush by aggressive recounting, Gore still loses again. Arguing about who would've won in a complete recount that would've lasted until April, 2001 is pointless. Yes, it is truly a shame that Florida's voting system was so bad in 2000, and I honestly hope they've fixed it for this year, even if it costs Bush. But elections are run by rules, and under any interpretation of the rules anyone could come up with, Bush won in Florida fair and square.