The Election Recount

The Past May Repeat Itself in this Election

Michael Tipton, News Reporter

The Presidential Election of 2020 has become eerily similar to the Presidential Election of 2000 in many ways, the most prominent of which is the potential involvement in the Supreme Court deciding the election result.

“Twenty years after the Supreme Court decision known as Bush v. Gore effectively decided a presidential election, it’s back on the country’s mind,” Propublica reporter Ian Macdougall explained. “President Donald Trump, who is lagging in polls amid a surge in COVID-19 cases and refuses to commit to leaving office quietly should his bid for reelection fail, has said he believes the Supreme Court will intervene in the upcoming election to hand him a second term.”

This is a very similar tactic used by Democratic candidate Al Gore in the 2000 Presidential Election.

The 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore was extremely close. The determining factor in the vote were the 25 electoral votes Florida had in 2000, which were disputed for over a month after Election Day. The Bill of Rights Institute provided an in depth analysis of the election,

“Bush led Gore in Florida by 1784 votes,” the Institute explained. “The machine recount required by Florida law in extremely close elections narrowed Bush’s lead. As allowed under state law, Gore requested hand recounts in four heavily Democratic counties. Not all of the four counties were able to complete their recounts by the legal deadline, even after the Florida Supreme Court extended it. The deadline passed, and Florida’s Secretary of State declared that Bush had won Florida, and therefore, the Presidency.”

The 2000 election dispute going to the U.S. Supreme Court draws several parallels to the 2020 election. President Trump has already been on record saying he will not leave the White House, and is willing to get the Supreme Court involved as well. Not only that, just as we’ve seen in the 2000 election and the recount of Florida, we have now started our own recount of the 2020 election in the state of Georgia.

A poll worker counting ballots-Courtesy The LA Times

A similar scene to Florida in 2000 is being witnessed by those in Georgia, where a hand-done recount is underway. The Washington Post described the situation,

“The effort was part of a historic manual recount of Presidential votes in Georgia, where hundreds, if not thousands, of workers in the states 159 counties on Friday began the tedious task of re-tallying each of the nearly 5 million votes cast and checking for any potential irregularities,” WP writers Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Reis Thebault elucidated. “The recount, the largest hand recount in U.S. history, was ordered by Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.”

Previous statements made by President Trump, along with the Georgia projected recount decision, may hint that the election may not be done.. President Trump doesn’t mind getting the Supreme Court involved with the recount, and if Georgia votes primarily for Biden, this would then be a very probable scenario. With all the evidence presented, the Nation could very well be suiting up for a historical recurrence this election.