2000 Election Reading

Prereading:

1. Is there a chance that Gore would have won if the votes had been recounted completely?
2. Was the Supreme Court mostly Republican at this time?
3. Was Bush worried during the recount or was he fairly confident he had won?
4. Has there ever had to be a recount like this before?
5. How did the American public react to the idea of a recount?

Facts and Details:

1.  The Supreme Court backed their decision by referencing Article II, Clause II of the Constitution ("Each  state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors") and Section 5 of Title 3.
2. Voting was made difficult due to the use of "butterfly ballots."
3. Democrats argued that the State Law provided for a manual recount.
4. Republicans argued that the manual recount was unlawful.
5. The election was finally decided after the 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court. The recount had to stop and Bush was the winner. 

Postreading:

1. What would make manual recounting unlawful? How is it any less fair than the machine counting?
2. Have we since changed our voting methods to avoid such confusing ballots?
3. Was there a standard they could have made when deciding how to recount which outlined which ballots were counted as legal?
4. Who was actually doing the manual recounting?
5. Was the recounting stopped because of a lack of confidence in the counters?