Politics and elections 93more than half a million votes over his opponent, the Republican George W.
Bush; 48.4 per cent of the total vote for Gore, 47.9 per cent for Bush. Never-
theless, because of the working of the Electoral College, Bush was eventually
declared the winner with 271 Electoral votes to 266 for Gore (one member of
the Electoral College, committed to Gore, abstained from voting).
To win the presidency it is necessary to gain an absolute majority (270) of
the votes in the Electoral College. If no candidate achieves this the election
is thrown into the House of Representatives, a very strange way of electing a
president. On election night it seemed likely that Gore had won 267 Electoral
College votes, three short of the total needed, and Bush had won 246. The
remaining 25 Electoral College votes, which would decide the election, would
depend on the result in the State of Florida, where George W. Bush’s brother,
Jeb Bush, was Governor. Initially it seemed that Bush had won Florida by a
margin of 1,784 votes out of a total of almost 6 million, and on election night
Gore conceded defeat, only to withdraw his concession later. Florida state
law requires a recount in such a close race, and it was this that produced the
extraordinary scenes that fascinated the nation, and indeed the world, for
five weeks.
In a number of counties in Florida the electorate cast their votes on punch
card machines. This involved the voters recording their votes by using a sty-
lus to punch holes in a rather complicated ballot paper, which would then be
read by a machine. Initially the Florida authorities ordered a recount by run-
ning the machines again, but the Gore camp asked for a manual recount in
a number of counties, which would mean that each ballot would be checked
visually. This was no simple task. The system was extremely inefficient, in
that the small pieces of paper – known as chads – which were punched out of
the ballot cards by the voters were sometimes only partially perforated, and
the manual recount made it necessary to make judgements about the inten-
tions of individual voters. Furthermore in one county, Palm Beach County,
the design of the ballot paper was so confusing that many voters were misled
into voting for a different candidate from the one they really intended to vote
for. Manual recounts were carried out in a number of counties, against the
background of legal disputes in state and federal courts about the validity
and continuation of the recounts. As the recounts continued Bush’s majority
in the state fluctuated, at one point falling to a mere 154 votes, with the
possibility that if the recounts continued his majority would disappear alto-
gether. However, there was a deadline for the reporting of the election results
which would inevitably bring the process to an end.
The election took place on 7 November; by law the members of the Elec-
toral College would meet in the state capitals on 18 December to cast their
votes for president and vice-president. If the Florida result could not be certi-
fied by then the consequences were unforeseeable. Federal law provided for
the results of the election to be certified by the state authorities at least
six days before the vote in the Electoral College, if the results were not to
be challenged. Katherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State, a Bush