Florida 2000, explained: 537 votes, butterfly ballots and the reforms that followed
The 2000 presidential election came down to Florida, and Florida came down to a few hundred votes. The 36-day fight that followed reshaped how the state, and the country, run elections.
A 537-vote margin
Republican George W. Bush finished ahead of Democrat Al Gore in Florida by 537 votes, which set off an automatic machine recount, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. Nearly 6 million ballots were cast in the state, WPTV reported. Florida's electoral votes decided the race: Bush won the Electoral College 271-266 while losing the national popular vote.
Butterfly ballots and hanging chads
Two problems drew most of the attention. In Palm Beach County, a "butterfly ballot" design led voters to end up choosing the wrong candidate or more than one. WPTV reported the county recorded 19,120 overvotes, and it cited an estimate that about 2,800 people who meant to vote for Gore were counted for Pat Buchanan.
Across the state, disputes also broke out over punch-card ballots and the bits of paper, called chads, that voters punch out of them, according to Britannica.
Bush v. Gore
The Florida Supreme Court ruled on the recount on Dec. 8, 2000. The U.S. Supreme Court followed with its Dec. 12 ruling in Bush v. Gore, according to Britannica. Seven justices found an equal protection problem with the recount, and the court split 5-4 on the remedy. The decision ended the recount about five weeks after Election Day, Reason noted. Gore conceded the next day.
The reforms that followed
In May 2001, the Legislature passed the Florida Election Reform Act, 38-2 in the Senate and 120-0 in the House, according to the Florida Senate's bill record. The law banned punch-card voting systems, rewrote manual recount procedures, set rules for provisional ballots and created a Voter's Bill of Rights. It also gave the secretary of state final say over which voting machines counties could use, Reason reported.
Congress followed with the Help America Vote Act, which President Bush signed on Oct. 29, 2002, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. The law created that commission, gave states money to replace voting equipment, required provisional voting and statewide voter registration databases, and set minimum national standards for running elections.
Florida kept making changes. A 2007 update required electronic machines to produce a paper record, according to Reason.
How we reported this: This explainer was drafted with AI assistance from the sources linked above, and every fact was checked against those sources. See an error? Contact us and we'll correct it.
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