General Discussion

For the record, the media invented vote counting scenarios that did not exist in Florida election law. This resulted in the media not counting all of the uncounted Florida votes and writing false headlines based on not counting all of the votes in order to invent a non-existent "Bush win". Buried deep within the media articles was the truth that when all of the ballots were counted as Florida election law required, Al Gore got the most votes.

Florida election law in 2000 required that all ballots where the intent of the voter is clear be counted. The Gore campaign proved beyond a reasonable doubt during the district court proceedings that the punch card voting machines were plugged up with chad because they had not been properly maintained making it impossible for voters tot be able to punch all the way through their ballots. Just because the ballot was not punched all the way through does not mean that is was not possible to determine voter intent. It just meant that the counting machines could not read such ballots. The Miami Herald's post election book "Democracy held hostage" shows a picture of a dimpled ballot. The intent of that voter was absolutely clear. Florida election law in 2000 had a remedy for counting ballots that the counting machines could not read because the Florida legislature understood that with machines now counting the ballots, there was a possibility that there could be votes where the intent of the voter was clear but for whatever reason, the counting machine could not read it. Florida election law required that ballots that the counting machines could not read where the intent of the voter is clear be hand duplicated and counted. The county election supervisors were required to keep detailed logs of every ballot that was counted in this manner. This was in order to comply with the overall Florida election law that required counting every ballot where the intent of the voter is clear.
It turns out that 10,000 absentee ballots located in the most heavily republican voting counties in Florida that the counting machines could not read were in fact hand duplicated and counted in this manner. They favored Bush by more than 2 to 1 and they[re included in the bogus Katherine Harris vote count. The existence of these hand duplicated heavily republican absentee ballots is documented by the detailed logs kept by county election supervisors in the counties where the votes were cast and also in a May 7,2001 article in the Orlando Sentinel titled, "Mangled Ballots resurrected" that you can still google. The fact is, the provision for hand duplicating and counting ballots that the counting machines could not read applied to all ballots in Florida that the counting machines could not read and not just absentee ballots in heavily republican voting counties. Back in 2000, absentee ballots skewed heavily republican. This took place at the same time that Bush was publicly lying claiming he opposed counting ballots by hand and that all of the Florida ballots had been counted and recounted. These were both big lies by Bush.
It's important to understand that Florida election law in 2000 did not allow for a statewide count of the ballots. Florida election law gave the counties the authority to count the ballots and it gave all candidates running statewide the ability to challenge county vote counts that they disagreed with which is what the Gore campaign did. The Bush campaign never filed any county vote count challenges because they knew as the Gore campaign did that most of the uncounted Florida votes were located in the largest and most heavily democratic voting counties. For the record, in a prime time speech, Al Gore did agree to drop all legal proceedings if Bush would agree to a state wide count of the uncounted votes. Bush refused and when the Florida Supreme Court ordered that the uncounted votes be counted, Bush went running to the republican controlled U.S. Supreme Court who stopped the legal Florida vote count with Judge Scalia admitting that they stopped the vote count to help Bush.
This is what really happened and for 25 years the media has refused to tell this story because the media is pro republican. It must never be forgotten that 170,000 legally cast ballots sit uncounted in the Florida archives because of the Bush campaign's all-out assault on democracy because they knew they couldn't win if all of the votes were counted. The anti-democracy behavior carried out by the Bush campaign in Florida in 2000 has now become standard operating procedure for Trump and the republican party.