Al Gore won the popular vote in Florida in 2000
Now that former Vice President Al Gore is back in the limelight, I want to correct the record about what happened in Florida in the 2000 presidential election.
The October 13th New York Times article, Gore Shares Peace Prize for Climate Change Work stated, “Mr. Gore, who lost the 2000 election to Mr. Bush…” without qualifying this sweeping statement. Countless times I’ve heard people say Gore lost the popular vote in Florida in 2000. Not true.
Unlike Ohio in 2004, where the uncounted ballots were never counted (apparently many of those ballots have been destroyed) the uncounted ballots in Florida were counted after the election.
The Battle for Florida - An Annotated Compendium of Materials from the 2000 Election, by Lance deHaven-Smith, photo, (published by the University Press of Florida in 2005) states on page 8, “In a year-long study paid for by the nation’s most important newspapers, NORC [National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago] carefully examined and evaluated all the 175,010 ballots that had remained uncounted at the end of the dispute.” On page 39, “…”Gore has the most votes when all votes are counted.”
In 2005, deHaven-Smith concluded, …”[M]ost Americans are under the mistaken impression that the true winner of the 2000 presidential election could not be definitively determined….Americans hold this erroneous opinion because they were misled and confused by journalists, political consultants, academics, and others…”
I think most Americans still have a mistaken impression about who won in Florida in 2000.
The Battle for Florida costs $75 (thanks to my good friend Janie Sheppard for buying it), but it’s well worth the purchase price if you really want to know what happened in Florida in 2000.
My response to the query, “Six years on, this is still a problem?” is to direct readers to yesterday’s New York Times article, Voting Machines Give Florida a Headache. The hanging chads may have disappeared, but it’s clear that Florida, along with most of the states, has some work to do before the upcoming elections.
Back to Gore: My friend, Tod Brilliant, has posted two very interesting articles, most recently Gore Nobel Win Damages Environmental Movement and earlier this month, Why Al Gore Makes the Perfect Third Party Candidate.
(photo of Gore: James Rexrod – fantastic photos, check it out!
(photo of Lance deHaven Smith from his academic website)
