Talk:2000 United States presidential election recount in Florida

Untitled
What about uncounted Bush votes and invalid Gore votes?

Why is there no consideration in this article of Bush votes (for example from military personal overseas) that were not counted in Florida? The only votes the article appears to be interested in are Gore votes - and it is certainly not interested in Gore votes that were counted, but were invalid under Flordia law (such as votes from some convicted felons, or votes from non citizens).2.26.103.247 (talk) 12:34, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Article copy edit needed
This is one of the most ridiculous articles in all of Wikipedia. There is a total failure of detail an entire section which should be written on the lower court decision, which after all, is the basis for the Supreme Court's decision. The lower court is the only court where the big issues were litigated. I read about a larger story with NYTimes & every major TV network that was published in August 2001 not even mentioned, which had 4 different total recounts with actual Florida standards (rather than the ones detailed here.   I wish I was better equipped to update the article.   Perhaps in the future, but I am also hoping somebody else can help.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:19D:301:37B0:5D7C:5E61:6CA7:8128 (talk) 23:30, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

This article as currently written is rather confusing. The text concerning the issue of "who would have won under various recount scenarios" does not seem to correspond to the chart below it -- or at least if it does match, it is unclear how it does. A significant copy edit is needed for clarity. I am not familiar enough with the material to do this, just pointing out that it needs work. Cheers, Arjuna (talk) 11:20, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

"outcome of one particular study" is the most hilariously biased thing I have ever read on Wikipedia. ~ Strathmeyer (talk) 00:50, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Even in the first paragraph, the phrase starting with "which" seems ambiguous as to the referent of this "which" -- the write up actually looks tendentious.166.237.65.6 (talk) 12:16, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Statewide Recount
In connection with the recent HBO movie, both David Boies and Ron Klain have claimed that a stadewide recount was indeed in progress and that the U.S. Supreme Court stopped it. It is technically true that neither CAMPAIGN requested a statewide recount; the Florida Supreme Court did! In an interview with Charlie Rose, David Boies emphasized that what the Supreme Court stopped was a statewide recount. http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2008/5/22/1/a-discussion-about-the-hbo-film-recount. So I don't know that it's accurate for this article to state that a statewide recount was "never undertaken." Matt2h (talk) 20:49, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I originally offered support for this change, but I'm removing my comment and replacing with this one. The reason being I realize you're talking about the results from the media financed study. The "(never undertaken)" portion of that tally is meant to refer to the study itself not the actual recount. It serves an important reminder to the reader that the vote totals are simply mathematical estimates. No one actually conducted a full state wide recount simulation for the study, they merely estimated what it would be. I think it should stay as written. CoffeeGiraffe (talk) 11:42, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

What defines a "statewide recount"?
Justice Rehnquist's concurring opinion in Bush v. Gore:

"Yet in the late afternoon of December 8th–four days before this deadline–the Supreme Court of Florida ordered recounts of tens of thousands of so-called “undervotes” spread through 64 of the State’s 67 counties."

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-949.ZC.html

How do you define a "statewide recount"? Is that recount of all ballots, i.e. 6 million in this case? Or all of the spoiled ballots, i.e. 179,855? Or just 1% of the vote or 60,000 ballots, i.e. the undervote in 64 of Florida's 67 counties?

In Florida's 2000 general election, there were more than 6 million ballots cast. The order for a recount in Gore v. Harris (12/8/2000) was to recount just 1% or 60,000 under voted ballots. How is that considered a statewide recount?

When asked by the court in Bush v. Gore, David Boies admitted that the 60,000 number was correct.

CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST: So, if you disagree that 177,000 ballots will be involved in this recount, how many do you think there are?

MR. BOIES: It's approximately 60,000, I think, Your Honor. It turns out to be less than that because of the recounts that have already been completed. But I think the total sort of blank ballots for the presidency were about 60,000.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/election2000/scotus/boies_12-11.html

Rustymustang (talk) 11:38, 6 September 2008 (UTC)Rustymustang

Citing only one media study?
This article only mentions (without actual citation) one media recount, claiming that it results in a Gore victory. It leaves out another media recound, by USA TODAY/Miami Herald/Knight Ridder (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politics/2001-04-03-floridamain.htm) which comes to the opposite conclusion for most ballot counting scenarios.

I understand the need to edit an article to support your position, but shouldn't all reputable media studies be mentioned? And shouldn't the one media study in the article be cited?

Given that the study isn't actually cited, I wonder if it exists. But removing it from the article would probably be an overreaction without more research showing it's lack of existance. --Fredrik Coulter (talk) 13:45, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Results
The date of "November 12, 2001," seems suspect, given it was a full year after the election. Now, this may be referring to a study with which I'm not familiar, so I'm not going to change it outright. But I do believe that serious editors should review the source material and correct this date if it proves in error.

104.35.43.128 (talk) 15:33, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Why is that suspect? The study was organized and performed on the same original ballots and machines. CoffeeGiraffe (talk) 17:41, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

From the file "NORC readme.txt":

"The raw data file contains 175,010 records. Of these, 61,190 are undervotes and 113,820 are overvotes.  In total, 138,037 ballots were from counties using Votomatic technology, 5,198 from counties using Datavote, and 31,775 from counties using Optical Scan technology.  The complete breakdown of ballots by ballot type (undervotes/overvotes, Votomatic/Datavote/Optical Scan) follows:

Total Records (Ballots): 175,010

Total Undervotes: 61,190 Total Overvotes: 113,820

Total Votomatic: 138,037 Total Datavote: 5,198 Total Optical Scan: 31,775

Votomatic Undervotes: 53,215 Votomatic Overvotes: 84,822

Datavote Undervotes: 771 Datavote Overvotes: 4,427

Optical Scan Undervotes: 7,204 Optical Scan Overvotes: 24,571"

Jeff in CA (talk) 19:41, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

"Unofficial" Tally
Can anyone provide a source for the following line: Incomplete result when the Supreme Court stayed the recount (December 9, 2000) 	Bush by 154

The cited source for the table does not include this information. CoffeeGiraffe (talk) 17:43, 10 January 2015 (UTC)


 * When the Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide recount of remaining uncounted undervotes, it stipulated that the late results from Palm Beach and Miami-Dade that had been rejected by Harris be counted. This immediately reduced the Bush margin from 537 to 154. (537-215-168=154) Jeff in CA (talk) 10:05, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Merge Request?
I've never done a merge before - but shouldn't this article be merged with the United States 2000 Presidential Election in Florida article? Thoughts? CoffeeGiraffe (talk) 09:04, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Angled butterfly ballot image needs to be removed
Who was voting? Children and little people? This is a ridiculous exaggeration.

The reason for the accidental votes for Buchanan was this: the Republican nominees were first on the left-hand side of ticket and, quite intuitively, corresponded to the first hole. However, the Democratic ticket was second and yet the second hole corresponded, quite counter-intuitively, to the Reform Party. A voter would have had to punch the third hole to vote for Gore. For someone who's only interested in the two major parties (read: the vast majority of voters), it's an understandable mistake, even if it's one that could have easily been prevented had the voter taken a few extra moments to understand the ballot. No optical illusions—just an unintuitive ballot design coupled with brain farts. 72.200.151.13 (talk) 01:53, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi - I completely agree with you, but I'm confused why you think the image of the angled butterfly ballot does not reflect this. Could you please clarify? CoffeeGiraffe (talk) 11:30, 22 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Because it's an unrealistic simulation. No one was viewing the ballot at that angle. The severe angle shown in the image implies that voters were viewing an optical illusion in which the arrow for the Democratic ticket pointed to the second hole (and the first arrow inexplicably pointed to no hole at all). That wasn't the issue at all. The problem was the fact that both major parties were on the left side of the page, and a voter only giving the ballot a casual look in order to locate their preferred major party candidate would have had to go no further than that side. If they weren't paying attention, they might assume that the second hole corresponded to the second ticket (Democratic) listed on that side. 72.200.151.13 (talk) 03:55, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I see what you mean now, thanks for clarifying. So, the caption of the image isn't part of the article but attached to the image, and I think it's a little much. A caption should just be a caption, not include analysis of the image itself. Nothing in the actual article indicates the optical illusion so the image itself is the problem. Secondly - although I'd personally disagree with any optical illusion argument, if this was a claim made by the Democrats, then the article should include that the claim was made, along with any Republican counter arguments, and any studies or analysis done on the ballot. It's not our job to remove arguments we disagree with from the article, but merely to report the arguments made to the reader, along with studies and let the reader make it's own conclusions. CoffeeGiraffe (talk) 13:18, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it is understood that "the Democratic ticket was second" in placement on that "butterfly ballot", but you could have inserted "on the left" in the message above, which I am not editing. Carlm0404 (talk) 04:31, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Sneaky table removed
I removed a table from the article. The table put far too much formatting and color emphasis on one set of recount data, implicitly suggesting that this particular recount was far more valid than the election result or other recounts. 98.118.62.140 (talk) 04:32, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Formatting and color emphasis? That's ridiculous! The table contains information. It's not implicitly suggesting anything. Jeff in CA (talk) 07:00, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * I noticed that the link above from the bot failed; however, the article has already been updated with a correct archived link (http://web.archive.org/web/20071225225422/http://www.mclaughlinonline.com/newspoll/np2001/001206panh.htm). Therefore I have marked it "true".  Jeff in CA (talk) 00:19, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Problems sections removed
Where did the part about the unusual poor quality paper used for Florida ballots go? https://www.wired.com/2007/08/sequoia-voting/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mydogtrouble (talk • contribs) 14:42, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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What time did the Florida polls close?
IF YOU ARE NOT ALREADY DOING SO here and in other articles: Please specify that the Florida polls close at __ pm local time. Yes, I am aware that some network people goofed and said the polls were closed in Florida when, because of the time difference, they were still open in western Florida (Central Time). I guess many people didn't realize the use of Central Time in part of that state despite also having an Atlantic Ocean coastline.

This article has been cited!
A September revision of this article was cited by Judith Brett, an emeritus professor of politics at La Trobe University, in From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia Got Compulsory Voting. An accompanying comment runs "I would not normally cite a Wikipedia article, but this is exceptionally detailed, well-referenced and based on primary archival research." A huge congratulations to everyone who has worked on this article. – Teratix ₵ 14:41, 21 April 2019 (UTC)


 * I am pleased and extremely humbled. Jeff in CA (talk) 23:40, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Merger proposal
Proposing to merge Palm Beach County Canvassing Board v. Harris (Harris I) into this article.

It's a stub that's been unsourced for more than 13 years. I redirected it to this article because it's already covered here (though in a likewise unsourced section). That redirect was undone on the basis of the unsourced article having more unsourced content than this article's unsourced section. There doesn't seem a reason for a separate article on this at this point. Per WP:NOPAGE it makes sense to cover here first and if it grows in size (including refs) then it can always be spun back out. &mdash; Rhododendrites  talk \\ 18:37, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Agree. This article provides context, lacking in the free-standing article. I'd also like clarification whether this case was appealed under the same or different name, or was simply mooted by other cases. Numbersinstitute (talk) 18:26, 28 February 2020 (UTC)


 * agreed do it! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blindlynx (talk • contribs) 18:09, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I copied the content of Palm Beach County Canvassing Board v. Harris (Harris I) into this article, per this discussion. Still needed on the Talk pages of both articles are the proper WP procedural imprints in order to preserve the page history and edit notes. If someone can do this, that would be great. Otherwise, I will come back and do it later. Jeff in CA (talk) 19:49, 4 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I inserted the "Copied" templates on both pages. See below. Jeff in CA (talk) 06:28, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Orphaned references in 2000 United States presidential election recount in Florida
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of 2000 United States presidential election recount in Florida's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Sweeney": From John McCain: Sweeney, James. "New rules on Indian gaming face longer odds", The San Diego Union-Tribune (September 11, 2006). Retrieved July 1, 2008. From Political positions of John McCain:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 02:17, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

There was a table here showing how various problems would have swayed the vote
That table disappeared. 2600:1012:B1CD:4C7B:7197:F145:7B06:CDDD (talk) 21:49, 17 November 2022 (UTC)