squashed:

“It seems to me that the Americans are the most vocal about the whole “Democracy must win” point of view, which is fair. But, you guys seem to have forgotten when this sort of thing happened in your own country, Florida to be more specific, during the 2000 American Presidential elections. What happened then? I know that there was no twitter or any other massively popular online medium to voice your protests, but however you chose to protest, did it magically make Al Gore the president?”

(kapi)

It’s conventional wisdom in left-leaning circles that George Bush lost the election but became President anyway due to a series of dirty Republican tricks and the complicty of a biased Supreme Court. It’s a convenient story—but it isn’t really true.

Three things happened in the 2000 election:

• George Bush won a majority of the electoral votes—which means he won the election.
• Al Gore won the popular vote. That and a buck fifty will buy a cup of coffee.
• We heard a lot of stuff about Florida. Something, apparently, was seriously wrong with Floridians—but they still get to vote, even if they (evidently) have trouble with the mechanics of it.

The results in Florida, however you count them, were incredibly tight. They were initially counted—and Bush won. If some ballots had been designed differently, perhaps Gore would have won. If fewer absentee ballots had been disqualified, perhaps Bush would have won by a greater margin. If the weather had been different, perhaps Gore would have won. If Miami had had particularly bad traffic, Bush would have won by a greater margin.

Then there was a mess of legal wrangling. Gore wanted a selective recount in counties where he had done well. Treating some ballots differently than others is a huge electoral no-no and Gore didn’t get this. If he had, he still would have lost. Eventually the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the recounting. Was it a partisan decision? Were the judges biased? Maybe. Or maybe they just split the same way they frequently split. And once the Supreme Court had spoken, people accepted their result. The process was followed. There were no riots.

And what if Gore had gotten his recount as requested? It still wouldn’t have been enough. Is there any sort of recount method where Gore could have won? There are a few—though there are more where Bush won. If some ballots had been designed differently, could gore have won? Probably—though if other ballots had been designed differently, perhaps Bush would have gotten an edge. Ultimately, though, there was an established process. The process was followed. We elected Bush. Even those who claim we elected Gore (mostly) know that the claim is dubious at best.

The claim in Iran is different. The claim is that the vote totals were fabricated or that ballots were deliberately tampered with or destroyed. In Florida, the problem was poor ballot design and a poorly handled recount process. Outside the conspiracy theories, there was very little suggestion of actual malice.

I appreciate your fair and non-hysterical treatment of this issue. The truth is that there was no conspiracy, no stolen election. The main issue in Florida is that Gore wanted to change the rules in the middle of the game and, regardless of whether there ended up being some disenfranchisement, the rules had to be followed. If the rules are unfair (a point which I have no problem conceding), they should be changed before or after an election. You don’t change horses mid-stream, to borrow a very old metaphor. Many democrats vilified Katherine Harris, but all she did was impartially follow the letter of Florida’s election laws. And the Supreme Court upheld the same.