2000 U.S. presidential election

From RationalWiki
Jump to: navigation, search
The (official) winner, Republican George W. Bush
The loser, Democrat Al Gore

The 2000 U.S. presidential election was a highly controversial affair that was eventually decided by a 5-4 vote along ideological lines in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Bush v. Gore. It ended with the proclamation of George W. Bush as the public representative of Dick Cheney, the real leader of the free world.

With most of the country coming down from the high of the Clinton era, the comparisons between Vice-President Gore and the other guy were downplayed and likened to "Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee."[1] While the media proceeded to do little to expose what in hindsight were pretty significant ideological differences between the two, some hippy also ran and then we were fucked for, in the end, eight years.

Gore's defeat in the 2000 election despite popular vote victory and apparent victory in Florida, which was the state that ultimately determined the winner in the electoral college, took more than a month to be considered definitive. The initial count in Florida had Bush winning by less than 2000 votes, and triggered a recount. As America watched it became clear that thousands of voters in Broward County, Valusio County, Miami-Dade County and Palm Beach, collectively possessing the IQ of a sea cucumber, had no idea what the hell they were supposed to do in the voting booths. Several thousands of people were apparently intent on voting for two presidents, or just seemed interested in wholly or partially punching out random holes in their ballots to see what would happen; the answer, as it turned out, was a totally FUBARred result. Further adding to the confusion was the notorious "butterfly ballot" used in Palm Beach, where around three thousand people apparently managed to accidentally vote for Pat Buchanan because they couldn't be bothered to actually follow the arrows on their ballot. As if that weren't bad enough in and of itself, Palm Beach county also happens to have one of the highest concentrations of Jewish people in the country (approximately 255,000, or around 20% of the county's total population).

In the midst of all this confusion both parties flooded Florida with enormous amounts of people to engage in a near riot outside of the locked room where votes were being counted and the Republican party, with Tom Delay at the helm, quickly developed a strategy of taking advantage of possibly the dumbest trial judge in the State of Florida, who consistently delayed ordering a recount of the multiple defective Florida election results. When the sharpest lawyers money could buy finagled Gore vs. Harris all the way to the Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia led the Court into one of its most ignominious rulings in history, which was basically that since so much time had elapsed (chiefly due to Republican dilatory tactics, but also partially due to thousands of ballots being so horrifically mangled that from looking at them it was impossible to be certain what on earth peoples' intentions were) and that there was no one state-wide process for a recount (as all of these procedures were county-level and inconsistent with each other), they would not count the votes because there would have been too much of a rush to do so and no guarantee that they would all be counted the same way. The ruling also declared that it should not be considered precedent in any future case, to guard against the possibility of a future Republican candidate having an election victory stolen from him in a similar manner because the circumstances were supposedly unique. When pressed on this matter, conservatives will typically point out that none of this would have happened if Gore could have simply won his home state; while true, this entirely fails to actually address the issue.

Contents

[edit] Red state, Blue state

The 2000 election was also notable in that it was the origin of the color assignment of Red to the Republican Party and Blue to the Democratic Party on maps depicting who had carried what. This completely illogical arrangement runs counter to the tradition in other democratic nations, where the conservatives are given the colour blue, and the socialists the colour red — nevertheless, it has stuck.

[edit] Vote breakdown by education

Voted[2]
State
% with bachelor degrees[3]
Gore District of Columbia 44.2
Gore Massachusetts 35.8
Bush Colorado 34.7
Gore Connecticut 34.6
Gore Maryland 34.5
Bush Virginia 32.2
Gore New Jersey 32.1
Gore Vermont 32.0
Gore Minnesota 30.6
Bush New Hampshire 30.3
Gore Washington 30.2
Gore New York 29.7
Gore California 29.1
Gore Rhode Island 29.1
Bush Kansas 28.7
Gore Hawaii 28.2
Gore Illinois 28.1
Gore Delaware 27.6
Bush Alaska 26.6
Gore Oregon 26.4
Bush Utah 26.2
Gore Maine 25.9
Bush Montana 25.8
Bush Georgia 25.7
Bush Nebraska 25.3
Bush Florida[4][5] 25.0
Bush North Dakota 25.0
Bush Texas 24.5
Bush Arizona 24.3
Gore Michigan 24.3
Bush North Carolina 24.3
Gore Pennsylvania 24.2
Bush Missouri 24.1
Bush Idaho 24.0
Gore Wisconsin 23.8
Gore New Mexico 23.7
Bush Wyoming 23.7
Bush South Carolina 23.2
Bush South Dakota 23.1
Bush Ohio 23.0
Gore Iowa 22.5
Bush Oklahoma 21.9
Bush Tennessee 21.5
Bush Louisiana 21.3
Bush Alabama 21.2
Bush Indiana 21.0
Bush Nevada 19.5
Bush Mississippi 18.7
Bush Kentucky 18.6
Bush West Virginia 17.0

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

  1. Or, as Futurama called it, "Jack Johnson and John Jackson."
  2. http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/2000presgeresults.htm
  3. Percent of People 25 Years and Over Who Have Completed a Bachelor's Degree
  4. The Supreme Court declared that Bush had won Florida, but there was no reliable tally of the popular vote and the decision was that Gore had no right to ask for a recount.
  5. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2001-05-10-recountmain.htm
Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Community
Tools
support