Bush V. Gore Chene Castrodale Britton Borlace Hour 2 AP Govt

Historical Background On November 8, 2000, the Florida Division of Elections reported that Bush won with 48.8% of the vote, a margin of victory of 1,784 votes. The margin of victory was less than 0.5% of the votes cast, so a statutorily-mandated automatic machine recount occurred. On November 10, with the machine recount finished in all but one county, Bush's margin of victory had decreased to 327. On November 14, the statutory deadline, the Florida Circuit Court ruled that the seven-day deadline was mandatory, but that the counties could amend their returns at a later date. Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties ordered manual recounts.

Historical Background Continued Prior to the 5 p.m. deadline on November 14, Volusia County completed its manual recount and certified its results. At 5 p.m. on November 14, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris announced that she was in receipt of the certified returns from all 67 counties, while Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties were still conducting manual recounts. By December 8, 2000, there had been multiple court decisions regarding the Florida presidential election and on that date the Florida Supreme Court, by a 4-3 vote, ordered a statewide manual recount. On December 9, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 to stay the Florida recount.

Legal Question The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, on which the decision in Bush v. Gore was based. The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment states that; No State shall... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. The courts had two questions to be answered: Were the recounts, as they were being conducted, constitutional? If the recounts were unconstitutional, what is the remedy?

The Decision Bush argued that recounts in Florida violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because there was no statewide standard that each county board could use to determine whether a given ballot was a legal vote. Each county used its own standard to manually recount each vote, and Bush argued some counties would have more lax standards than other counties. Gore argued that there was indeed a statewide standard, the "intent of the voter" standard, and that this standard was sufficient under the Equal Protection Clause.

The Decision Continued Noting that the Equal Protection clause guarantees individuals that their ballots cannot be devalued by "later arbitrary and disparate treatment," the per curium opinion held 7-2 that the Florida Supreme Court's scheme for recounting ballots was unconstitutional.

The Precedent Many people believe that this case was one of worst decisions ever made by the supreme court. It has been compared to Dred Scott V. Sandford Bill Clinton who was president at the time wrote in his autobiography, “If Gore had been ahead in the vote count and Bush behind, there's not a doubt in my mind that the same Supreme Court would have voted 9 to 0 to [re]count the vote and I would have supported the decision... Bush v. Gore will go down in history as one of the worst decisions the Supreme Court ever made, along with the Dred Scott case.”

Public Opinion This decision although popular within the republican party was copnsidered a horrible decision. Many people do not understand how the electoral college works and were up in arms due to the fact gore won the popular vote.

Personal Judgment and Justification We believe that the supreme courts decision to not recount the vote was a large mistake due to the fact that after the decision was made they were proved that there was a mistake. They proved that George W. Bush never should have been president and that Al Gore should have legally been our president in the 2000 election.