Florida Vote Recount: Scandal, Timeline, Election, Controversy, Conspiracy (2000)

The Florida election recount of 2000 was a period of vote re-counting that occurred following the unclear results of the 2000 United States presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, specifically the Florida results. The Florida vote was ultimately settled in favor of George W. Bush, by a margin of only 537 votes out of almost 6 million cast, when the U.S. Supreme Court, with its final ruling on Bush v. Gore, stopped a recount that had been proposed by the Florida Supreme Court. The outcome resulted in Bush gaining a majority of votes in the Electoral College, winning the overall presidential election. A 2008 made-for-TV movie directed by Jay Roach, produced by, and starring Kevin Spacey called Recount explores the 2000 election and recount. It premiered on the HBO cable network on May 25, 2008. The controversy began on election night, when the national television networks, using information provided to them by the Voter News Service, an organization formed by the Associated Press to help determine the outcome of the election through early result tallies and exit polling, first called Florida for Gore in the hour after polls closed in the eastern peninsula (which is in the Eastern time zone) but before they had closed in the heavily Republican counties of the western panhandle (which is in the Central time zone). Once the polls had closed in the panhandle, the networks retracted their call for Gore, calling the state for Bush; they then retracted that call as well, finally indicating the state was "too close to call".[2] Gore made a concession phone call to Bush the night of the election, then retracted it after learning just how close the election was.[3] Bush won the election-night vote count in Florida by 1,784 votes. Florida state law provided for an automatic recount due to the small margins. Once it became clear that Florida would decide the winner of the presidential election, the media focused on the Florida recount. The Florida election had been closely scrutinized since the election. After the election results were announced, charges were raised that some irregularities favored Bush. Among these was the Palm Beach "butterfly ballot," which some pundits claimed produced an "unexpectedly" large number of votes for third-party candidate Patrick Buchanan. Conservative opinion commentators countered that the same ballot was successfully used in the 1996 election with no post-election protests.[4] Progressive commentators also claimed that there was a purge from the Florida voting rolls of over 54,000 citizens identified as felons, of whom 54% were African-American, and that the majority of these were not felons and should have been eligible to vote under Florida law.[5] (The presumption was that had they been able to express themselves at the polls, their likely choice would have been the Democratic candidate.[6]) Additionally, there were charges that there were many more "overvotes" than usual, especially in predominantly