Who Should Have Won the Election of 2000?
Author: Matt Hipszer
Course/Level: 10th grade American Government
Materials:
1) Photographs of the 2000 Election
http://www.cafwd.org/page/-/images/blog/florida_hanging_chad_recount.jpeg
http://americangovernment.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/275380?terms=Election+2000
http://americangovernment.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/265706?terms=Election+2000
http://americangovernment.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/258892?terms=Election+2000
http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/wiki/pub/Main/StatGraphCourse/PalmVoteBallotConfusion.png
2) The 2000 Elections: The Palm Beach Ballot; Florida Democrats Say
Ballot’s Design Hurt Gore (Modified)
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/09/us/2000-elections-palm-beach-ballot-florida-democrats-sayballot-s-design-hurt-gore.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
3) Who Won the Election of 2000? (Chart)
4) Quotes on the Florida Ballot
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/the-florida-recount-of-2000/
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politics/2001-05-10-recountmain.htm#more
HCPSS Curriculum Connections:
This activity would be completed during the unit: Influencing
Government (Unit 3).
Learning Outcome(s):
Students will demonstrate the ability to infer how voting and voting
behavior influences American government. Goal 2 (1056.00)
Analyze the roles of political parties, campaigns, and elections in the
United States’ politics. Objective B (1056.02) 1.1.4
Historical Thinking Skills Assessed:
Sourcing, Close Reading, Corroboration
Background Information for Teacher:
The election of 2000 will be remembered in many ways—as the most
disputed election in U.S. history, as one of the few times the winner of
the electoral vote did not win the popular vote, and for the U.S.
Supreme Court's role in the hotly contested Florida recounts. Neither
Republican George W. Bush nor Democrat Al Gore was declared the
winner on election night. A recount began in Florida the following day,
called for by the state constitution when less than 1,500 votes separate
candidates. At the same time, questions arose about ballot design in
south Florida, with many residents claiming they had mistakenly voted for
Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan when they intended to vote for
Gore. Questions soon turned to lawsuits—over ballot design and the
legality of the recount.
County election officials continued recounting until November 26,
when Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris declared Bush the
winner of Florida's electoral votes and thus the national election. By that
time, it was clear that Gore had won the national popular vote by more
than 337,000 votes, and his legal team declared the electoral vote still
undecided. Not counting votes, the Gore team argued, was a disgrace to
democracy. Appearing before Florida judge N. Sanders Sauls, lawyers for
Bush and Gore argued their sides for 22 hours, with Sauls finally ruling on
behalf of Bush. Since the disputed votes would not change the outcome
of the election, there was no need to include them in the certification,
Sauls said.
This lesson will look at some issues that arose over the recount and
ballot issues from the election of 2000. Students will be assessed on the
historical thinking skills of Sourcing, Close Reading, and Corroboration
as they answer the essential question: Who should have won the election
of 2000?
Context Setting---The Hook
Students will quick write for 3 minutes on if they agree or disagree with
the following quote:
“The American system of elections routinely fails to count hundreds of
thousands of ballots because of errors by voters”
Discuss student responses.
Students will also preview the topic by looking at images and predicting
the event by answering: (10 Minutes)
***NOTE: this activity can be shortened by only looking at one or two of
the pictures. However, the picture of the butterfly ballot is necessary
background information for the students to have a better understanding
of the documents in this lesson.***
Who is in the picture?
What is happening in the picture?
Where are they?
When was the picture taken?
Document Analysis
Students will read excerpts from a New York Times article titled, The
2000 Elections: The Palm Beach Ballot; Florida Democrat’s Say Ballot’s
Design Hurt Gore. Allow students to work independently to read and
answer the corresponding guiding questions. This activity will give
students a better understanding of the ramifications of the design of
the ballot. Debrief their answers as a class. (10-15 minutes)
Guiding Questions:
1) SOURCING: When was this document written and is it a reliable
source? Why/Why not?
2) CLOSE READING: What were some of the problems with the ballot in
Palm Beach?
3) CLOSE READING: According to the information presented in this
document, who should be awarded Florida’s 25 Electoral votes? WHY?
Corroborating Evidence and Constructing Interpretations---Close
Analysis
Inform students that after the election results were final there was a
study of the ballots in Florida to determine who would have won the
election if there would have been a recount. Students will then evaluate
a series of six quotes dealing with the Florida ballots in the 2000 and
complete the chart titled Who Won the Election of 2000?
Allow time to briefly discuss the quotes and whom the sources thought
won the election.
Thoughtful Application:
Have students respond to the following quote:
“Gore’s best chance to win was lost before the ballots were counted, the
study shows. Voters’ confusion with the ballot instruction and design
and voting machines appear to have changed the course of American
history.”
In one paragraph, explain if you agree of disagree with the quote and
answer the essential question: who won the election of 2000?
Encourage students to use evidence from the documents to support
their answer.
Hook Activity: Photo Analysis
Students will also preview the topic by looking at images and predicting
the event by answering: (10 Minutes)
***NOTE: this activity can be shortened by only looking at one or two of
the pictures. However, the picture of the butterfly ballot is necessary
background information for the students to have a better understanding
of the documents in this lesson.***
Who is in the picture?
What is happening in the picture?
Where are they?
When was the picture taken?
http://www.cafwd.org/page/-/images/blog/florida_hanging_chad_recount.jpeg
While security officials and disgruntled spectators watch, the Ryder truck transporting the contested
Palm Beach County ballots backs into a lower level garage behind the Leon County Courthouse on
November 30, 2000.
MLA Citation
"Armed ballot convoy arrives in Tallahassee, Florida." Image. UPI. American Government. ABCCLIO, 2013. Web. 21 Feb. 2013.
http://americangovernment.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/275380?terms=Election+2000
The Orlando Sentinel published four election editions on November 8,
2000. The first edition was headlined "Oh, so close," followed by "IT'S
BUSH," then "IS IT BUSH?" and lastly, "CONTESTED." The controversy
over one of the closest presidential elections in American history left the
nation in doubt for several weeks as to who the new leader would be.
"Election Day 2000 ends with no clear victor." Image. AP/Wide World
Photos. American Government. ABC-CLIO, 2013. Web. 21 Feb. 2013.
http://americangovernment.abcclio.com/Search/Display/258892?terms=Election+2000
http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/wiki/pub/Main/StatGraphCourse/PalmV
oteBallotConfusion.png
The 2000 Elections: The Palm Beach Ballot; Florida Democrats Say Ballot's Design
Hurt Gore (MODIFIED)
By DON VAN NATTA Jr. and DANA CANEDY; November 09, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/09/us/2000-elections-palm-beach-ballot-florida-democrats-say-ballot-s-designhurt-gore.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
The dispute centers on the peculiar layout of a presidential ballot in Palm
Beach County that some Democratic voters say caused them to become
confused and mistakenly vote for Patrick J. Buchanan when they had intended
to vote for Vice President Al Gore.
After the final tally, with Mr. Gore trailing Mr. Bush by just 1,784 votes in
Florida, several senior Democratic officials said if the ballot had not flummoxed
their supporters, Mr. Gore would have won enough votes to win Florida and the
presidency.
Even though he never made even one campaign stop in Palm Beach County, Mr.
Buchanan, the Reform Party candidate, finished with 3,704 votes in the
staunchly Democratic county -- nearly 2,700 more than Mr. Buchanan received
in any of Florida's other 66 counties.
More than 29,000 ballots in Palm Beach County were thrown out because they
included votes for more than one presidential candidate or had no names
punched, according to records released today by the county's Supervisor of
Elections.
Between Tuesday and today, hundreds of voters went to the Board of Election
office in West Palm Beach to complain that they were so confused by the
ballot's boxy layout that they had mistakenly voted for Mr. Buchanan instead of
Mr. Gore.
Robert Weisman, the Palm Beach County administrator, said this afternoon
that approximately 19,000 ballots included two or more votes for president, and
that many included votes for both Mr. Gore and Mr. Buchanan. He said it was
evidence that many voters were confused. Democrats quickly seized on that
statistic, saying if Mr. Gore had received just 10 percent of those votes, he
would have had enough to defeat Mr. Bush in Florida and win its precious 25
electoral votes, needed to win the presidency.
Mr. Buchanan's 3,704 votes in Palm Beach County was by far his strongest
showing in any county in Florida, and was 20 percent of his vote total in Florida
of 17,358. His second best showing was 1,012 votes in Pinellas County, site of his
campaign's Florida headquarters. He received only 561 votes in Miami-Dade and
789 in Broward County, which both have considerably higher populations than
Palm Beach County.
Guiding Questions
1) SOURCING: When was this document written and is it a reliable source?
Why/Why not?
2) CLOSE READING: What were some of the problems with the ballot in Palm
Beach?
3) CLOSE READING: According to the information presented in this document,
who should be awarded Florida’s 25 Electoral votes? WHY?
Who Should Have Won the Election of 2000?
After the 2000 Presidential election several news outlets and independent
organizations conducted studies in an attempt to determine who should have won
the election. The focus of the study surrounded the recount of ballots in Florida.
Read the quotes from the various studies and complete the chart below.
QUOTE
WHO WON?
Why? Support
USA TODAY
Palm Beach
Post
Factcheck.org
AP
Cauchon &
Drinkard
Anthony
Salvanto
Corroboration: Did some of the sources come to the same conclusion? What
sources and what was there conclusion?
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
USA Today:
Quotes on the Florida Ballot
George W. Bush would have won a hand recount of all disputed ballots in Florida’s
presidential election if the most widely accepted standard for judging votes had
been applied.
The newspaper said that Gore might have won narrowly if lenient standards were
used that counted every mark on a ballot. "But," it said, "Gore could not have won
without a hand count of overvote ballots, something that he did not request."
Palm Beach Post columnist Frank Cerabino:
Like sorting grains of sand on a windy day, getting a definitive recount of Florida’s
votes in last year’s presidential election has turned out to be an exercise in
frustration.
In a statewide election decided by hundreds, maybe only dozens, of votes, the
limitations of the voting machinery – compounded with sometimes sloppy custody of
the ballots and the slight but measurable biases of allegedly neutral human
tabulators – make getting precise vote totals virtually impossible.
FACTCHECK.ORG:
On the other hand, the study also found that Gore probably would have won, by a
range of 42 to 171 votes out of 6 million cast, had there been a broad recount of all
disputed ballots statewide. However, Gore never asked for such a recount. The
Florida Supreme Court ordered only a recount of so-called "undervotes," about
62,000 ballots where voting machines didn’t detect any vote for a presidential
candidate.
AP:
A vote-by-vote review of untallied ballots in the 2000 Florida presidential election
indicates George W. Bush would have narrowly prevailed in the partial recounts
sought by Al Gore, but Gore might have reversed the outcome – by the barest of
margins – had he pursued and gained a complete statewide recount.
Dennis Cauchon and Jim Drinkard, USA TODAY:
George W. Bush would have won a hand recount of all disputed ballots in Florida's
presidential election if the most widely accepted standard for judging votes had
been applied, the first comprehensive examination of the ballots shows. However,
the review of 171,908 ballots also reveals that voting mistakes by thousands of
Democratic voters — errors that legally disqualified their ballots — probably cost
former vice president Al Gore 15,000 to 25,000 votes.
Anthony Salvanto, a political scientist at University at California at Irvine:
He examined the voting patterns on 56,225 overvote ballots for which he had
complete data on all races and estimated that Gore would have gained at least
15,000 votes if Gore supporters had not made overvote errors. "You get a pretty
clear pattern from these ballots. Most of these people went to the polls to vote for
Gore," says Sal