Introduction

The US Presidential Election of 2000 featured George W. Bush and Al Gore. It will go down in history as one of the most closest elections¡¦ in US history. It also goes down as one of the most controversial. The final decision was based on just a few hundred votes in Florida. The controversy began when the media prematurely declared the winner twice based solely on exit polls. They finally conceded that the Florida count was just too close to predict. It would take a month before the election was ultimately certified after numerous court challenges and vote recounts. Republican candidate George W. Bush was declared the winner of the Florida¡¦s 25 electoral votes. This was a victory by a razor thin margin of popular
Under the electoral vote, it takes 270 votes to win the presidency. There were also two other states in the mix, New Mexico and Oregon. Like Florida, the voting was too close to call at the time. It was later that both New Mexico and Oregon declared in favor of Gore making the total now 246-267. This left the final determining factor up to the state of Florida. General concerns of the fairness and accuracy of the Florida count emerged. The small change in the vote count could determine the outcome, whatever it was. At last, the final and disputed official count gave the victory to Bush by a mere 537 votes. Immediately, the Gore campaign filed a dispute in the state¡¦s election results by requesting that questionable ballots in four Florida counties be hand counted. Bush counteracted by filing suit against manual recounts. The Bush campaign hired former Secretary of State, James Baker to oversee the legal rulings. The Gore campaign hired former Secretary of State, Warren Christopher on their behalf. This eventually led to the Gore campaign appealing to the Florida Supreme Court. It was ordered that the recounting procedure to move forward. Then the Bush campaign appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. They agreed to take the case of Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board on December 1. On December 4, the matter was returned to the Florida Supreme Court for clarification.