Presidential Election Trials: 2000

Friday, December 8

At day's end, a four-member majority of the court (Justices Anstead, Lewis, Pariente, and Quince) decided that all so-called "undervotes"—i.e., ballots on which no votes for president had been recorded, estimated at 45,000 statewide—must be manually recounted. The court ordered that Florida's 25 electoral votes be awarded to whichever candidate won the recount. It also said that Judge Sauls had set too high a standard in deciding that Gore had not proved that disputed ballots should be counted. And it ordered hand counting of 9,000 Miami-Dade ballots that machines failed to read—as well as similar ballots statewide.

As election boards rushed to organize recounts, attorneys for Bush raced to the U.S. Supreme Court to appeal.