Once again, the loser of a presidential election is challenging the results and going to court, and so our thoughts go back to the last time this happened: in 2000, when election loser Al Gore tried to overturn the results in Florida so as to give him enough electors to win the presidency.
Yet some commentators, even those who were around during 2000, have a distorted memory of the whole thing. The most distorted came from Joy Reid of MSNBC in a tweet widely mocked for other reasons:
Here’s the thing: the reason there’s a thing called @FiveThirtyEight is because 538 was the margin in FL when the Republican SCOTUS reversed the 2000 election during a recount, making Dubya the president. That’s the kind of margin where races can flip. That’s not what’s up now.
— Joy WE VOTED!! WEAR A MASK!! Reid ?) (@JoyAnnReid) November 10, 2020
Her misunderstanding of the significance of “538” aside, Reid is simply wrong that “the Republican SCOTUS reversed the 2000 election during a recount, making Dubya the president. “ There was never any reversal. George W. Bush won Florida, and Gore’s legal campaign was an effort to reverse that result through recounts and lawsuits.
Yes, television networks called Florida for Gore on election night, but that was — shockingly — before polls had closed in parts of the state. Later that night, the networks called the state for Bush, also prematurely.
When America woke up Wednesday morning, Bush had a slight lead. The Florida division of elections reported that day that Bush had won by 1,784 votes.
So in the initial count, Bush won. Gore hoped this would be overturned by the statewide recount, which was automatically triggered by the closeness of the original result.
That statewide recount helped Gore, but not enough. The Associated Press compiled the recounts of every county on Nov. 10, was ahead after the recount by 327 votes.
At that point, Bush had been the winner after the initial count, and he was the winner after the statewide recount.
Many counties subsequently chose to do hand recounts. Some of them finished by the statutory deadline for certifying the vote. When that deadline came and went on Nov. 14, Bush’s lead was 300 votes, according to the state government and 286 votes, according to the Associated Press. So Bush had won in the initial count, in the automatic recount, and in the first wave of hand recounts.
Some Democratic counties, however, hadn’t finished their third counts (second recounts) by the deadline, and this was the source of much legal wrangling. These counties, along with the Gore campaign, sued to force Secretary of State Katherine Harris to accept late recount totals.
On Nov. 18 (while recounting and legal wrangling), the count of absentee ballots concluded, and Bush’s lead had grown to 930 votes.
The state court then extended the deadline for counties to do their third count. Some counties met that deadline. Then on Nov. 26, the state certified the results. After a count, a recount, a hand recount, and more hand recounts under a special court-ordered extension, Bush won by 537 votes.
Florida’s Supreme Court then ordered even more recounting, specifically of the ballots where no vote for president was recorded but only in certain counties. In Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that this recount, with no standards for counties, and some counties flagrantly violating the court’s ruling in order to find more votes — violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution. A smaller 5-4 majority ruled that the state court could not continue to order recounts at this late date.
Whether you think the Supreme Court rulings were right or not, they certainly didn’t overturn anything. It was Gore who was trying to overturn the results of the count, the recount, a second recount, and a court-extended second recount. He came up short.
