Bush v. Gore, (2000) involved the constitutionality of a manual recount of Florida election ballots during the controversial 2000 Presidential Election between the candidates George W. Bush and Albert "Al" Gore.
The Details
At the end of the election day evening, Bush was ahead of Gore in the Florida popular vote by only 2,000 ballots, close enough to trigger an automatic recount. After the recount, Bush's lead dwindled to a mere 900 votes.
Gore requested a hand-recount of votes in his four strongest counties, Broward, Miami Dade, Palm Beach, and Volusia, as allowed by Florida law. After the recount, Bush's margin dropped to 537 votes. Gore then petitioned the State courts for a recount of 70,000 contested ballots. Although the lower court rejected his request, the Florida Supreme Court reversed on appeal, and ordered the disputed ballots recounted.
Bush and Cheney appealed the Florida Supreme Court's decision to the US Supreme Court, and were granted a stay on the Florida court's order until the US Supreme Court issued its decision. [There is some dispute as to whether this stay was necessary or a political maneuver designed to defeat the State's ability to complete a recount before the "safe harbor" deadline of December 12, 2000, coincidentally, the day the Court's opinion was released.]
The questions before the Court were:
- Did the Florida Supreme Court violate Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the US Constitution by making new election law?
- Do standardless manual recounts violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Constitution?
The Decision of the Supreme CourtThe Supreme Court voted in Bush's favor, 5-4, in a partisan decision controlled by the conservative justices. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy answered yes to the first question. Two progressives, Justices Breyer and Souter, agreed that the recount method being used was unconstitutional, but favored crafting a constitutional solution to the second question, rather than ending the recount.
The Court's opinion required Florida to stop counting ballots, holding that subjective decisions made during a manual recount represented a violation of voters' constitutional rights under the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause, because a portion of the ballots were devalued by being subject to "later arbitrary and disparate treatment."
Chief Justice Rehnquist, joined in his opinion by Justices Scalia and Thomas, also concluded that the Florida Supreme Court's decision created a new election law, which was an unconstitutional breech of separation of powers (the legislature has sole authority to make laws).
The Important Effects of the DecisionBush held a marginal lead over Gore in the popular election, so the net effect of the Supreme Court decision was to award Bush Florida's 25 electoral votes, giving him a national total of 271 electoral votes to Gore's 266 (one elector abstained), enough to put Bush in the White House. A final recount that was taken long after after the election showed that Bush actually won Florida by a narrow margin, so the Supreme decision did actually decide the election, but surely removed the harmful uncertainty that a recount would have required. However, the court did not know that in advance , The case was complicated by the fact that Bush's brother was the governor of Florida and the Florida Secretary of State who certified the election returns was a partisan Republican.
Case Citation:
Bush v. Gore, 531 US 98 (2000)