December 12, 2000: Bush v. Gore

December 12, 2000, 25 years ago: The Supreme Court of the United States overrules the Supreme Court of the State of Florida. It is the case of Bush v. Gore.

In the Presidential election of November 7, the Democratic nominee for President of the United States, the then Vice President of the United States, Albert Arnold Gore Jr., got more popular votes than the Republican nominee, the Governor of Texas, George Walker Bush: Gore 50,999,897, Bush 50,456,002, a margin of 543,895 votes. Ralph Nader, famous as a consumer advocate since the 1960s, ran as the nominee of the Green Party. He got 2,882,955 votes. Gore got 48.4 percent of the popular vote; Bush, 47.9 percent, Nader, 2.7 percent.

Bush's brother, Governor John Ellis "Jeb" Bush of Florida, saw how close the vote was in his State, and tampered with the voting process, and that one State held everything up for 5 weeks. The best attempt at a recount, in downtown Miami, was interrupted on November 22 by what became known as the Brooks Brothers Riot. As a result, there were votes that were never counted. I don't mean they weren't recounted, I mean they were never counted, not even once.

On December 8, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that all 61,000 "undervotes" had to be counted. Had that happened, Gore surely would have won. The Bush campaign immediately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. SCOTUS ruled on December 12:

* Four Justices ruled that the recount had to go forward: John Paul Stevens, appointed by Republican President Gerald Ford; David Souter, appointed by Republican President George H.W. Bush, the current Republican nominee's father; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, appointed by the current President, Democrat Bill Clinton; and Stephen Breyer, also appointed by Clinton.

* Five Justices ruled that the recount had to stop immediately, all of them appointed by Republican Presidents: William Rehnquist, appointed by Richard Nixon, and promoted to Chief Justice by Ronald Reagan; Sandra Day O'Connor, appointed by Reagan; Antonin Scalia, appointed by Reagan; Anthony Kennedy, appointed by Reagan; and Clarence Thomas, appointed by the elder George Bush.

It was pretty easily guessed that all 4 Justices who voted to keep the recount going would do so; and that 3 Justices known for being archconservatives -- Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas -- would vote to stop it.

The question marks were 2 moderates, both known as "swing votes": O'Connor and Kennedy. If either of them had voted to keep the recount going, it would have been kept going, and Gore would have won. Instead, both voted to stop it.

And so, in an election where over 104 million votes had been accepted as counted, only two votes ended up mattering: Those of O'Connor and Kennedy.

It may have been the ghastliest decision in the Court's history, aside from the 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, that said that black people weren't citizens (a decision remedied by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution). It also marked perhaps the 1st time in the nation's history that political conservatives overruled a case based in part on a State's rights.

It may have been surpassed as the ghastliest decision in the Court's history by Trump v. United States in 2024, when the Court ruled that Presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution.

Gore conceded the election the next day, forever doomed to be "the 42nd 1/2 President of the United States" -- a President-elect, but never a President. On January 6, 2001, in his role as the outgoing Vice President, Gore properly read the Electoral Votes, including the 25 of the State of Florida. Whether those votes were properly arrived at is another matter. Congress then certified the Electoral Votes.

On that January 6, no Democrats stormed the U.S. Capitol Building in an attempt to stop that process.

Twenty years later, of course, when it was Republicans who didn't like the result, they did storm the Capitol, and attempt to stop the process. They only delayed the inevitable.

Rehnquist died in office in 2005. O'Connor retired right before that. Souter retired in 2009. Stevens retired in 2010, and died in 2019. Scalia died in office in 2016. Kennedy retired in 2018. Ginsburg died in office in 2020. Breyer retired in 2022. O'Connor died in 2023. Souter died in 2025. As of December 12, 2025, Kennedy, Thomas and Breyer are still alive; while Thomas is the only 1 of the 9 who is still on the Court.

Bush's 2 terms in office were an unmitigated disaster, both domestically (especially economically) and internationally. Had Gore been allowed to accept his victory, he would have governed completely differently, and most Americans, including the conservatives, would have been better off.

November 7, 2000: No One Is Elected President

November 7, 2000, 25 years ago: Election Day. The Democratic Party's nominee for President, Vice President of the United States, Albert Arnold Gore Jr., gets more votes than the Republican Party's nominee, the Governor of Texas, George Walker Bush: Gore 51.0 million, Bush 50.4 million. Gore gets 48.4 percent of the popular vote, Bush 47.9 percent.

Ralph Nader, famous as a consumer advocate since the 1960s, runs as the nominee of the Green Party. He gets 2.9 million votes, or 2.7 percent.

Bush's brother, Governor John E. "Jeb" Bush of Florida, sees how close the vote is in his State, and tampers with the voting process, and that one State holds everything up for 5 weeks.

The following Sunday, November 12, among the guests on NBC's Meet the Press is William Safire, longtime political columnist for The New York Times; before that, a speechwriter for President Richard Nixon. Host Tim Russert asks him, "What do we have here, Bill?" And Safire says, "We have a tie."

For all intents and purposes, he was correct. Both Bush and Gore had a base that thought their man would make a good President. Both of them had party regulars who might not have been happy that the party as a whole nominated the candidate that it did, but would vote for that party's nominee anyway, because that's what they always did. And then there were people who weren't members of either party, and didn't especially like either one, but decided one was worse, and voted for the other one.

It would have been so simple for Gore to win. All he had to do was ask the outgoing President, Bill Clinton, to do one rally for him in downtown Miami. It would, literally, have made all the difference in the world, because, in spite of his personal mistakes, Clinton was a very successful President, and still popular nationwide -- more so than Gore or Bush.

But Gore was terrified that Clinton's personal scandal, which led to his impeachment by a Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives, and then his acquittal by a Republican-controlled U.S. Senate, would attach itself to him. So, in his speech at the Democratic Convention at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, he tried to run on the Clinton economic record without the Clinton personal-conduct record, and said, "I stand here today as my own man."

Bush couldn't say that. Well, he could, but, like so many other things he said, it would have been a lie. The son of a President, he was a dimwitted hothead who had faked his way through life. Every time he failed -- in keeping out of military service, in business, and in a 1978 run for Congress -- his father's friends bailed him out.

But Texas evangelicals got him nominated for that State's Governor, an office where the only real requirement is make it easier for businessmen to make money. He got elected in 1994 and 1998. Jeb, considered the smart, level-headed one in the family -- often compared to Michael Corleone, to George's Sonny and father George's Don Vito -- lost in his 1st race for Governor, also in 1994, but won in 1998.

The media gave Bush the benefit of every doubt, and Gore the doubt of every benefit. Case in point: The 1st debate, on October 3, at the Boston campus of the University of Massachusetts. Bush, as he usually did, made himself look like he was not smart enough to be President. Gore was caught on camera sighing over some of Bush's dumb answers. The reaction of most of the American media was not that Bush was too dumb to be President, but that Gore was too rude to be President.

This was the problem: Bush, a known recovering alcoholic, was seen as "the kind of guy you'd like to have a beer with," while Gore was "stiff," "uptight," and "a know-it-all." As comedian Bill Maher put it, "God forbid, the President of the United States should be smarter than we are." But Maher also addressed Gore's image: "People like what he stands for. They just don't like him." And people did like Bush, even if they thought he was dumb.

And enough people didn't like Gore to throw Florida into doubt. Jeb Bush's Secretary of State, in charge of running elections, was Katherine Harris: Young (33 in 2000), attractive, every bit as committed to the conservative movement as the Bush brothers were, and, it was rumored at the time, Jeb's mistress. He put her in charge of ensuring that "Dubya" won in Florida.

Court-ordered recounts were undertaken, and "the Brooks Brothers Riot" in downtown Miami the day before Thanksgiving stopped the one in Dade County. When the U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled on December 12 that the recounts must stop, and Bush be accepted as the winner, it was the ghastliest decision in the Court's history, aside from the Dred Scott decision that said black people weren't citizens (a decision remedied by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution).

Nader, appealing to leftists who felt betrayed by Gore and President Bill Clinton over the last 8 years, won 97,488 votes in Florida. Bush's final lead in Florida was 537 votes. But Nader's voters wanted their "pure" candidate, and the result was the most un-Nader-like (and the most un-Gore-like) Administration anyone could have imagined.

Needless to say, New York's 2 major tabloid newspapers had differing opinions. The Daily News cared about journalism, and their headline was "TOO CLOSE." The Post cared about promoting the conservative candidate, and their headline was "BUSH WINS!"

The election of sitting First Lady Hillary Clinton to be a U.S. Senator from New York was almost unnoticed outside that State. More attention was paid in Missouri, where Governor Mel Carnahan was killed in a plane crash, too close to the election to be replaced on the ballot, and still won the election for Senator over the incumbent, former Governor John Ashcroft. His widow, Jean Carnahan, was appointed to replace him. Bush appointed Ashcroft to be his Attorney General.

Indeed, in connection with the Democratic nominee for President getting the most popular votes, the Democrats gained 4 seats in the Senate, forging a 50-50 tie, which went 51-49 in their favor the following June, when Jim Jeffords of Vermont switched to become an Independent caucusing with the Democrats. The Democrats only gained 1 seat in the House, not nearly enough to take control.