Jason Smith

- 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.

(via squashed)

I agree with the above. I would also like to add that the results were not reported until hours after the election and even the results were unclear the morning after the vote took place. In Iran they announced the results within two hours of the polls closing.

Also, the problems with voting were contained to one state. If this had been a nationwide phenomenon you can bet there would have been protests, but as noted above this was a different time. Remember the Bush who was elected in 2000 was not viewed in the same was as the Bush who left office just recently.

As far as the situation in Florida is concerned it is interesting to note that the head of the Bush legal team was a former Secretary of State, and this was a time when the Republican Party had a very clear message and an excellent organization at its disposal. The Democratic Party of 2000 was very different than it is today. Not to say that it was weak then, but that they did not have the same clear vision that Baker and the rest of the Republican team had.

All of this to say that I would not be surprised to see massive military crackdown in Iran, and that the next time the government wants to fix an election they will probably wait a little longer to release their “results.” They can then file this under lessons learned, or we might be in for some very interesting news about an actual revolution and civil war over this.