Stuff You Should Know - The 2000 Presidential Election: A Real Cluster

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

When George W Bush and Al Gore ran against one another, most pundits predicted a tight race. Absolutely zero of them predicted the election would come down to a few hundred votes. Today, we still don���t know who won.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to stuff to blow your mind on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And it's just us again, which is fine because we're here to talk about the 2000 election Jerry probably wouldn't want to hear about it Can I tell the quickest story of my how this went down for me sure I Was moving to Los Angeles in November 2020 and 2000 what I say 2020 yeah. Weird that you had mentioned 2020

when you were talking about 2000. I know. So I was in a big U-Haul. I was towing my car, my 75 Plymouth Valiant, a name T behind me. And I was somewhere in Texas, West Texas, when I spent the night and then woke up the next morning, it was kind of freezing cold in West Texas.

And I was documenting this whole trip via my high eight video camera, singing songs into it and kind of documenting the journey. I'm going to get all these tapes digitized soon. That's one of my Christmas break projects this year. But I very distinctly remember when I turned on the camera and got in that truck the next morning, I said, hey, everyone, so, or, I don't know if I can say, hey, everyone, because I had no audience back then. Sure. So I think I said, hey, me.

It's weird. I went to bed last night and the election had happened and I woke up today and no one knows who won still. And this is weird because we always know who won. I guess I'll see what happens. And then I hit the road. Yeah. And what, 30 something days later, it was finally decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. Yeah. That was an interesting thing too that today you're like, yeah, I could see not knowing that that day. That seems a little, a little quick, almost suspiciously quick. Now, at the time it was like, what do you mean it's past midnight and we don't know who

won? That's crazy. The 2000 election definitely started that whole thing. And the election for those of you who don't know was between Vice President Al Gore, who was Vice President to Bill Clinton for both terms. He was looking to continue the Clinton legacy, I guess, as President himself. And he was running against George W. Bush, son of George Bush, George H. W. Bush, and the brother of Jeb Bush. I think it's his older brother. And at the time,

Al Gore was viewed as this very wooden, I think Jeb's younger. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Jeb's the younger brother. And at the time, Al Gore was viewed as wooden, unapproachable, very smart, policy-wank, who could not relate to the average person to save his life. And George Bush was viewed as just this complete dingus who was a part of a political legacy whose family clearly viewed him having the presidency as his birthright. That was the selection that America had at the time. But this is all against the backdrop of the economy really doing nicely and there hadn't been any really big problems or wars for a while. I can't I can't really think of any

direct war that the United States would have been involved in since Vietnam. Oh, like, you know, big time war. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that, I think Vietnam was the last war we were in during this election. Yeah. So, you know, if you were watching comedy shows, especially Saturday night live at the time, you would get two things. You would, on one side, you would get, I can't even remember who played them, but this was how I'll go or was basically portrayed. Darryl Hammond.

Well, oh, that's right. He did. I don't know. I'm like Bill Clinton without a scandal. That was Al Gore, and then of course, I guess, was Will Ferrell the first, and Bush, you know, through comedy, and the media was, you know, that guy, I don't even care about being president. Yeah. I just want to make daddy happy.

That was sort of the lay of the land pre 9 11 before, you know, a lot of the country rallied around Bush. And, you know, like we said, Gora was trying to get away from that Clinton stink. Yeah, such that he didn't even get bill on the can, pain trail within that much. And it was also, I mean, this is a landmark election in a lot of ways, but it was also sort of the first, the first big election where you had someone say,

and hey, Gore is the big Washington insider, and I'm just this guy from Texas, like sort of rural versus urban power struggle. Yeah, that's where it generally began. The Bush campaign really was doing what they could to kind of highlight that dividing line. Yeah, so at the time, Bush had been pretty far ahead in the polls in the summer.

After the Democratic National Convention, Gore mounted a big comeback and by fall, by September, a couple of months before the election, these guys were basically deadlocked and everybody was saying this is going to be a really, really, really close election. Yeah. Hold on to your hands. Everybody knew that it would be close, but no one had any guess that it would turn out as close as it actually did. But just the polling, poll after poll after poll showed like, uh, uh, goers in the lead, nope, bushes in the lead, goers in the lead, gallop found that the lead changed nine times

just in the fall, the fall. Nine times. Exactly. And so by election day, Tuesday, November 7th, a lot of people, including Tim Russell, Reston Peace, had said, I think Florida is going to be the, going to decide the outcome of this. Yeah.

I didn't see exactly why I don't know if it was a gut feeling or what the deal was, but there were, there were a few people who were already pointing to Florida. And at the time, the news organizations, NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN, and the AP, all subscribed to a company called the Voter News Service, which had been set up in 1990, I think, by the big networks to basically pool their resources to pay for people who did exit polling. And they would give that data directly to the networks who would then use it to kind of like, you know, read the tea leaves as best they could to forecast who won. Because in 1980, NBC called Reagan at 815 p.m. and set up this huge competition among the networks.

Oh yeah, like calling for calling the election was a big big deal for a network. Yeah. And so you found that great article where they were like, you know, after that Reagan thing, all the network started spending a lot of money in the next cycle, you know, on their own exit polling data. And it was like millions and millions of dollars. spending a lot of money in the next cycle, on their own exit polling data. And it was like millions and millions of dollars. So when they got together basically and said,

hey, why don't we all just hire this one service so we can all save a lot of money. The downside of that was they were all getting the same information whether it was good or bad. And in this case, it turned out the information was not great. So Gore was doing pretty good, not just in the National Vote, but Electorally too. He got Pennsylvania, got Michigan, and Florida was starting to come in.

And apparently the numbers were up. The exit polling data for Gore was showing that he probably won Florida. Enough that NBC said, oh, we're doing it again. And at 7.49 pm on election day, NBC called Florida for Gore. They didn't go so far as to call the presidency for Gore, but the writing was on the wall. If Gore won Florida, that was that. And I guess about 15 minutes later, the rest of the news organizations had joined

and said the same thing. Right, so everyone's calling Florida for Gore publicly at this point that night. The VNS, that voter news service that was doing the exit polling for everybody, said, hey, news organizations, we've got some issues here with our data. Like, for example, in this one county in Florida, it was supposed to be 4,302 votes that we saw. Someone added a zero to that, and it was 43,020 votes. So maybe you should sort of hold off on calling

this thing. And all the news organization said, well, that's too late. We've already done that. And at just before 10 p.m. at 9.55, CNN was the first to come on and say, hey, wait a minute, we jumped the gun here. Everyone else, of course, followed suit. And then at 2.15 in the morning, Fox News comes on and says, Bush is gonna be the winner, not just of Florida,

but the whole thing. And then everyone else followed suit and said, and of course this is overnight. So you wake up in the morning thinking that George Bush had one. Right. So, well, not quite actually. Well, if you were staying up, we'll see what happened between then and sunrise. Yeah, and I think a lot of people were staying up glued to the TV still at this point by the time Fox said that Bush was the winner.

Yeah. And the rest of the networks joined in with that. So, that's three, three times now that they have made the projection. Because retracting a projection is a projection in and of itself. It's like Rush said, even if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. It's essentially the same thing.

And there's a quote from Donna Brazil, the disgraced democratic operative who was running Gore's campaign at the time. She texted Gore on his blackberryberry and I read the New York Times article about this, they felt compelled to explain that a blackberry was an instant messaging pager. That's how 2000 this thing was. By the way, really quick, I saw that movie, the blackberry movie on a plane flight recently and it's actually very good.

Oh, I'm sure. Most likely, you start pretty good. No, it's a movie movie. Most movies are pretty good. Anyway, recommended. So she told she's running the campaign and told gore like don't give up yet. This is every it's too too weird. Essentially I'm paraphrasing here. Yeah, which is true. But despite that gore was like I don't I think we lost. And so we even went to the extent of waking his wife, Tipper, who was not actually sleeping. She was under the blanket with a flashlight,

making a list of bands that she didn't like. And their kids and said, hey, I lost essentially. And they kids started crying. So he started to get ready to do his concession speech. That's how close this came. He called, he also called Bush, called George Bush, and said, Hey, congratulations, you know, you're the winner, obviously. And he got into a limo to go give the concession speech and Nashville to his supporters. And on the way, the one of his operatives said,

Hey, I've been watching the watching the Secretary of State, site in Florida, and Bush's lead went from 50,000 to 6,000. I don't think we should concede yet. And literally this happened in the caravan on the way for him to give his concession speech at like 3.30 in the morning. Yeah. And so because there were still some precincts that had been unreported. So they were like, slow your role, Gore.

So Gore called up Bush. Again, could not have been a fun phone call. Told them what was going on. Apparently there are people that heard these calls and said, Bush said, you know, are you really going to withdraw your concession? And Gore responded, quote, well, you don't have to be snippy about it. So Bush said, well, my brother is a governor for to, and he said that he said, I won. And Gore said, well, let me explain something. You're younger brothers, not the ultimate authority on this.

That, that, I think the Al Gore finally came around at the end, but George Bush, he sounded like a cross between you're Simidie Sam and a member of Leonard Skinnerd. Yeah, that's about right. Actually, now that you've mentioned it, it's like dead on. Yeah, so it was, I mean, between them, interpersonally, it got a little sticky right at the beginning. Yeah, I think George Bush even said, you can't retract. You're not allowed to do that essentially. Daddy, can he do that? So, yeah, it was a really big deal.

I don't think that it had actually happened before. Not as far as I know. I think this was sort of the first thing. Yeah, there were a lot of first things in this election. Yeah, so by four o'clock, the networks all retract their calls. And basically, this is what younger Chuck wakes up to in West Texas Which is we don't know who won Tom Brokall gets on NBC and says quote

We don't just have a gunner face. Oh wait, that was Al Gore light I'm getting all confused now. I heard a little brok on there. I used to do brokall We don't just have the egg on our face. We've got a homelid all over our suits at this point. Mm-hmm. And our face isn't everywhere else. That was great.

That was a great broke all. And he always sounded like he was out of breath. It wasn't that he got on, Chuck. This was 4 a.m. He was still on from when he got on at 7 p.m. Oh, yeah. This poor guy and Tim Russell, at least just on NBC alone, are like just dying here,

but they've never seen anything like it. And again, like as you said, this was a big deal in that it was really embarrassing. It was a really big thing to call, to be the network that called the presidency. So it was equally humiliating, to be the network that had to retract it and that happened to all the networks. But that also had a really big impact on public opinion.

At first they were like, well, gore one. So that means that if you guys called this it before 8 p.m. Eastern, there were still polls open in the West Coast and how many bush voters did you discourage from turning out because you'd said Gore already won. And then the opposite of it was that when they said Bush won, but then retracted it, people were like, no, Bush is the winner, which made it harder for Gore to get the public behind the recount that he was going. There was a lot of public opinion about this, a lot of opposition, some manufactured, some genuine, as we'll see, that really makes a big deal. You think for a second, like,

well, no, it just comes down to how many votes or who got how many electors from the Electoral College. No, like the public opinion has a lot of sway in a situation like this. So everything that happened publicly was a really big deal. Yeah, absolutely. Olivia, who helped us out with this, did a bang up job by the way. Fantastic, John. It was keen to point out that there were, you know, a few states that they didn't have the full results about anyway uh... or again has very famously long had a vote by mail system so uh... it took a while to get all those votes in

uh... it eventually went goers way uh... new mexico was uh... no one knew about new mexico until December 1st uh... that eventually went goers way as well and the republicans were like should we get a recount going in new mexico until December 1st, that eventually went goers way as well. The Republicans were like, should we get a recount going in New Mexico and Wisconsin and Iowa, but they basically, because the margins were pretty low, not enough to trigger any kind of automatic recount. But they thought about contesting those, but they would have had to win all of the states

that they were thinking about contesting. The writing was on the wall that, like, hey, listen, we're not going to win all of these. So we're not going to contest any of them. It's going to come down to Florida and we're going to put all of our eggs in that basket. Yeah, because Florida had 29 electoral votes and it could, it would put either one of them in the, the, the White House. That's how close this race was. That those 29 electoral votes going either way did it for for them. So in Florida, if you have a margin of victory that's under 0.5% the total tally of votes, then there has to be a recount, a machine recount, where basically you run all the ballots

through again and see what the count is, right? That's just law. That's 0.5%. This was 0.01% difference. Out of 6 million votes cast in Florida in the 2000 general election, a few hundred votes separated one candidate for president from another. And again, because whoever one Florida became president, a few hundred votes is what it came down to to determine who would become president at that time.

Yeah, because of how it works in the United States. If you're not from the United States, you can go back and listen to our electoral college episode. Do you want to use angry? I know. Because no matter how you count the votes, Al Gore won the popular vote just as Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in America, it doesn't matter who gets the most votes because we have the EC in place. But just a quick sketch of it though if anybody doesn't actually feel like going and listening to the episode again, Chuck's right. It's worth listening to. But in the United States,

in a state who ever has the most votes gets usually all of the electors that that state has to offer. And so in reality, what you're really running for as president is electors. So you want to win states and you can strategically win some states over the others and lose the popular vote and win the electoral college and still become president because you got more electors, even though more Americans voted for the other person. And that's the big controversy because it's super undemocratic because the general population doesn't actually decide, basically strategy decides.

It doesn't always wash out to be the person who won the popular vote. Well, since we're talking George Bush, should we say, strategic? Again, you can go back and listen to that episode and we'll touch on that a little bit at the end. But that's either here or there because we do have the EC and Florida was very, very close and there were people in the, I mean, we knew it was going to be a tough

fight at that point because a, Jeb Bush is the governor of Florida, Georgia's brother. The Secretary of State in Floridaan heros at the time was co-chair of the bush campaign there and the state attorney general uh... was a gorgi bob uh... butterworth so nuts was the head of the gorg the gorg campaign so this thing was just fraught from the jump yeah well chuck i think with that it's a good place for break what. What do you say? All right, let's do it. We'll get right back. Okay Tune into the new podcast stories from the Village of Nothing Much, like easy listening,

but perfection. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you. I'm Catherine Nicolai, and you might know me from the bedtime story podcast Nothing Much Happens. And you might know me from the bedtime story podcast, nothing much happens. I'm an architect of Kozy, and I invite you to come spend some time where everyone is welcome and kindness is the default. When you tune in, you'll hear stories about bakeries

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join us on the Science Podcast, stuff to blow your mind. Want to hear about how horses evolved to gallop entirely on their middle fingers and why some drawings show Julius Caesar's horse with human feet, or maybe about how some of the earliest experiments creating a vacuum in the lab were conducted by a guy who had the Batman symbol for a mustache. Fans of the show tell us they like the vibe. We try to keep things cozy, relaxed, and open-minded, but driven by curiosity and grounded in a skeptical and scientific perspective. On Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you'll hear everything from the story of how a 19th century inventor created a sort of modified pi-borgan that could speak English through a doll's head. Two, why mud-dobber-nesses are stuffed like a filled pastry full of paralyzed spiders. Explore topics scientific, historical, philosophical, and sometimes monstrous on stuff to blow your mind. Listen to stuff to blow your mind on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What up, y'all. This is Prop. I host a podcast called The Politics with Prop.

I am a firm believer that if you grew up in some sort of struggle or inner city in America, you understand politics more than you think you do. It's just not been translated in a language that you speak. I am here to translate it for you. For example, you know the filibuster is? Yeah, you do. Because if you got a mama that don't play no games, you've been filibuster in your whole life. Hey, mom, no, look, listen, listen, listen, my,

before you make your decision, what had happened was when I came home, you know, I was with Joe. You remember Joe from church, his mama and the prayer group with you. You remember Joe, so I took the chicken out group with you you remember Joe So I can't I took the chicken out like you said. I remember I took it because you said take the chicken out I did you remember I got a a on that on that math test you remember I got that a So I was gonna take that out and then work on you filibuster You're just trying to stop her from making an immediate decision

That's all filibuster and is and the Congress do it all the time See what I'm saying? Hey, you already know noticed stuff? So we take these seemingly complex high ideas and break them down in a way that you and me actually talk. So listen to her, politics with prop on the IHAR radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. All right. So here we are. It's November.

People don't know who the president of the United States is going to be yet. Things are starting to get pretty tense. And America is going to start learning some very specific terms and ins and outs as far as to how Florida conducted their elections at the time. They used and a lot of the counties a punch card system where you had a little card puncher and you would look at the candidate's name and there was a little perforated square beside that and you would use your little puncher to punch that thing out. The little square that gets removed is called a chad.

Depending on how punched out this chad was, determine whether or not your vote was counted. There were a bunch of terms at the time that had to define what this all meant. A dimpled or pregnant chad, which means you tried to punch it, and it was indented, but it was still fully attached, was a dimpled or pregnant Chad. You had the swinging door Chad where two corners are attached, and then you had a hanging door Chad, or what eventually became known as just a hanging Chad, where you punch all the way through, except one little corner remains attached. And that's the situation that determines the leader of the free world. It's not right and weird.

But that was the situation. Under Florida law, if you are an elections board in a county, during a recount, you have to try to determine what the intent was of the voter. Based on the ambiguous ballot they turned in, right? Yeah, which is huge. Like, again, the Florida law says the intent of the voter is what matters. Right. And that the election board during a recount has to determine what the intent is.

But there's no rules. There's no statewide rules. There's really no rules unless a canvas board like adopts them themselves to determine what a voter meant based on all those different types of chads, right? So they made this up as they went along. Or in some cases, counties already did have rules on the books as far as those chads go, like Palm Beach County. Yes. Palm Beach County is a good example because Palm Beach County arguably is where the entire

election flipped. Yeah. But they had a policy that they'd had for 10 years since 1990 that said if you have a dimpled or pregnant chat, it doesn't count. It's a spoiled ballot and that vote doesn't count. But if you have any kind of partially detached shed, swinging door, a tricorn or a hanging shed, any of those, that counts as a vote. Like the person clearly meant to vote using that.

They, during the recount, they just abandoned that and they tried something instead called the light test where you would, and there's pictures of people doing this, where you would hold the ballot up to a light source to see if any light's shown through. And if you could, in the year 2000, this is what we're doing. If you could see any light, then that counted.

And they realized that actually, that totally went against the rules, that you could have a type of hanging Chad, and light still not come through. So that means you don't count that ballot, and they just gave that up and went back to the original rules. This was the kind of catastrophe

that was going on during the recount in Florida, and everyone was reporting about every single minute of it. And the entire country was like, what is going on? And the people in Florida who were in charge of all the recounts are for wreaking out. Because if you read about these boards, they're like, they're not made for this kind of stuff. They're not, this is all totally new.

And all of a sudden, the New York Times and the Washington Post are standing over their shoulder watching them and reporting on it. And they're just flipping out. So they're doing just all sorts of goofy stuff that just doesn't make any sense because they're just like deer and headlights. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And these aren't huge boards.

Like in one county, it was like three people. Yeah, I think that was Dave County where Miami is. Yeah, which is just nuts. We should talk about the butter. I don't know if I can. This was the ballot in Palm Beach County. You sent me a picture of what this ballot looked like. I'm a reasonably intelligent adult human.

And I looked at this ballot, and it confused me a little bit. You should just look up a picture of the Palm Beach County Butterfly Ballet Bush Gourd election. But what it is, it's candidates on two sides, like Butterfly wings, all the way down and in the center between all those are the little punch holes. But here's the thing, is those, if you look at the two sides, they're, they're not aligned all the straight away across. One's a little higher on the left, one's a little lower on the right, and on the left, number one position is George Bush. Right under that is Al Gore. On the right, number one position is Pat Buchanan, but the way it aligns, and there are little arrows that point at the holes,

but it's confusing, and it's very, it would be very easy to think, oh no, I don't want to vote for Bush, I want to go down one and vote for Gore, but down one was actually on the other side, slightly lower as Pat Buchanan. And it was just a very confusing ballot. And they found that Pat Buchanan got about four times the vote in that county. Then he did nationwide. And that alone, and I'm not saying no one knows what would have happened for sure. But it was a funky looking ballot. Pat Buchanan had a very highly skewed amount of votes. And those amount of votes would have firmly given Al Gore victory. Yeah, and to make it even more confusing, the candidates were numbered, didn't even start with one and two.

It started with three. And then Buchanan was four, Gore was five, Mac Reynolds was six, the parental was a socialist. So there was one way that you could accidentally not vote for Bush. You would accidentally vote for Buchanan below him. There were two ways to accidentally not vote for Gore. You could accidentally vote for Buchanan above Gore or McRennel's below Gore. And like you said, Pep Buchanan is very instructive. The number of votes he got from the butterfly ballots, even comparing other Palm Beach County voters who voted by mail, Ebson T-entee ballot, that wasn't a butterfly ballot. His numbers were way less compared to the butterfly ballot votes. So suffice to say that a lot

of people accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan who meant to vote for Al Gore or George Bush, but probably more Al Gore because Palm Beach County is a strongly democratic county in Florida. All right. So in Miami, Dade, which I think he said was the most populous Florida county, initially that three person, that three person canvassing board said they were going to manually recount 650,000 ballots. They realized that's overwhelming and probably impossible because it was a looming deadline. So they said, all right, why don't we just count the 10,750 ballots that the computer system rejected? Because those are the ones that are in question and we feel pretty good that the other votes had been counted properly

because they were fully punched, no chat. Right. The GOP leaders said, hey, Camdenzing Board, uh, said, hey, Kim is in board. You're trying to rig this in favor of Gore, uh, and they tried to get all the, uh, the local Cuban Americans, while the upper and say, and like, hey, this is kind of stuff that happens under Castro. Like, you need to come down here and, and, and, and stage a, a protest, like this will not stand.

And what ended up happening was what was called the uh... Brooks brothers riot because it was not uh... local cubans it was not in fact in most cases local uh... floridians they came to protest but it was washington dc uh... political operatives and insiders that came down and they gave themselves away by the clothes that they wore. That's what it was called the Brooks Brothers riot. People at the time were saying like,

and they were trying to deny it, saying they were like local Floridians and they're like, well, you're certainly not dressed like somebody from Miami. You've got a Brooks Brothers suit coat on, sport coat on. In fact, most of you do. And they went down there and they were successful. They gathered in the plaza. They screamed voter-fraud. They were banging on windows and handing out crying towels and saying, you're a sore loser. And it worked. They succumbed to the pressure and stopped the recount. Yeah. So, by the way, Ted Cruz was one of those operatives who was in the riot, essentially fake riot. Although if you read an interview, there's a, I think, a Washington Post interview with

Brad Blakeman, who is the guy who was responsible for staging this protest and organizing it, that he sounds like he genuinely believed that this canvassing board was trying to throw the election to go, and and that really fueled a lot of it. So it's difficult in that respect to fault him and his group for protesting like that. On the other hand, it's very clear that this Brooks Brothers riot, they were accused of violence against election officials. They were at the very least, very hostile in your face.

Again, these canvassing boards are not cut out for this kind of life. They didn't know what the heck they were signing up for. And the Brooks Brothers rioters essentially intimidated them out of this very democratic process of recounting by hand ballots that had been rejected by the computer. There was no evidence whatsoever that the computer was selectively rejecting Gore ballots in order for him to come in and clinch the presidency in a very dramatic win

in Miami-Dade. It doesn't make any sense that that would have favored Gore. What they were doing was trying to stop the recount in the Bush was ahead because Bush was ahead. That was the entire point on November 9th. The Secretary of State Catherine Harris was trying to certify the election because Bush had 327 more votes than Gore. And so what these Republican operatives were doing in the Brooks Brothers, right, was trying

to stop the count right there to keep George Bush's lead. That was their goal. So it seems like Blakeman's view that what they were doing was illegal may or may not be disingenuous. I'm not sure. Right. Yeah. So these recounts are happening in the Secretary of State Harris, like you said,

all of a sudden the Florida State Supreme Court got involved. And she wanted to certify, like you said, on the 14th, but the Supreme Court said, no, you have to count all the votes. You can't certify the election. You need to count them all. You can't just throw out the votes that are in dispute. So there are four counties that you need to do a hand recount on. And over the next a month between November and December, there were more than 50 lawsuits being filed by all sides. Everyone all over the place is filing lawsuits about recounting and counting and deadlines and different various counties across Florida. And eventually on December 8th, the Florida Supreme Court came out and it's very important.

And rule 4-3 that you have to count what's called the under votes, meaning these votes that are unclear, that the Bush campaign wanted to just throw out, you got to count all these votes. And if you haven't done that yet in these counties, you got to do it. The Bush campaign said, well, we don't want to count all the votes because where ahead, the Gore campaign said, well, great, count all the votes.

That's democracy at work. And so the Supreme Court of the United States gets involved and all of a sudden on December 11th, you are getting oral arguments on the Supreme Court of the United States about how, like basically, a lot of things, um, chiefly one of which is, should the federal government get involved when states are supposed to run their own elections? Yeah, I say we take a little break and just prepare ourselves for the catastrophe that is Bush v. Gore. What do you say? Let's do it. Tune in to the new podcast, Stories from the Village of Nothing Much.

Like easy listening, but perfection. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you. I'm Katherine Nicolai, and you might know me from the bedtime story podcast, Nothing Much Happens. I'm an architect of Kozy, and I invite you to come spend some time where everyone is welcome and kindness is the default. When you tune in, you'll hear stories about bakeries and walks in the woods. A favorite booth at the diner and a blustery autumn day. Cats and dogs and rescued goats and donkeys.

Old houses, bookshops, beaches were kites flying, and pretty stones are found. I have so many stories to tell you, and they are all designed to help you feel good and feel connected to what is good in the world. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from the village of nothing much on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The world is so much weirder than you think. If you wanna find out why, join us on the Science Podcast,

stuff to blow your mind. Wanna hear about how horses evolved to gallop entirely on their middle fingers, and why some drawings show Julius Caesar's horse with human feet? Or maybe about how some of the earliest experiments creating a vacuum in the lab were conducted by a guy who had the Batman symbol for a mustache? Fans of the show tell us they like the vibe. We try to keep things cozy, relaxed, and open-minded, but driven by curiosity and grounded in a skeptical and scientific perspective.

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What up, y'all? This is Prop. I host a podcast called The Politics with Prop. I am a firm believer that if you grew up in some sort of struggle or inner city in America, you understand politics more than you think you do. It's just not been translated in the language that you speak. I am here to translate it for you. For example, you know the filibuster is?

Yeah, you do. Because if you got a mama that don't play no games, you can filibuster in your whole life. Hey, mom, no, look, listen, listen, listen, listen, mom. Before you make your decision, what had happened was when I came home, you know, I was with Joe. You remember Joe from church, his mom in the prayer group with you, you remember Joe, so I took the chicken out. Like you said, I remember, I took the chicken

because you said take the chicken out. Did you remember I got an A on that map test? You remember I got that A, so I was gonna take that out and then work on you filibuster. You're just trying to stop her from making an immediate decision, that's all filibuster in it, and the Congress do it all the time. See what I'm saying, how you already noticed up?

So we take these seemingly complex, high ideas and break them down in a way that you and me actually talk. So listen to her, politics with prop on the I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. hard radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. So Chuck, like you said, the Florida Supreme Court said, no, you need to hand count all of those ballots at the computers rejected to figure out who won and the Bush campaign sued to get that stopped and got it picked up by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court on December 9th issued a stay very strange that is very unusual for the Supreme Court to get involved in a state court ruling. Federalism basically said, they don't do that. Stop. Stop. Yeah, a stay was, stop the hand count. Don't do that anymore. And then, even more unusual, without the Bush campaign petitioning

for the Supreme Court to hear the case, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. And what they did was, take this up. It sounds confusing. But, yeah, no one in the Bush camp asked the Supreme Court to decide on the merits of the case and yet the Supreme Court decided to decide on the merits of the case.

And again, this is highly unusual. A state Supreme Court ruling for a state matter is pretty much sacri-sanked in Supreme Court, like US Supreme Court tradition. Supreme Court does not get involved in that kind of stuff. And they said, Hey, let's get involved in this, this horn it's nest right now. Yeah, exactly. So what we ended up with, we're a couple of rulings. There was a seven to two ruling that it violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment because the argument from the Bush side was, hey, listen, there isn't a codified statewide way that everyone

has agreed to do these recounts. And so that violates the equal protection clause. And on the gore side, he was saying, well, there is a codified way, maybe not in the way they do it, but the law is intent to vote. And that's on the book. So that's how we should decide. Right. And so the idea of applying the Equal Protection Clause doesn't really make sense because in America, every state has different ways of voting, not just among the states, but among the counties in an individual state.

It's all over the place. Like it's up to the county to decide what kind of voting machines they wanna use, how many to have, like it's up to, generally the county, if not the state, right? So that's a really weird thing to say, no, this particular state is violating the equal protection clause.

So we're gonna say, stop doing this hand count. We're gonna rule in favor of that because of the equal protection clause. So we're going to say, stop doing this hand count. We're going to rule in favor of that because of the equal protection clause. And then secondly, the other thing about the equal protection clause, Chuck, is what they were saying was everyone is not going to have their vote counted because it's because of the inequity and how you vote. So what we're going to do is just make sure we don't count some people's votes to protect them and keep them equal. Doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Yeah. And on that first point, I believe it was either briar or suitor in the dissent said, kind of pointed out what you were saying was saying like, well, hey, if this, that means that, that no state has a fair election. Right. Because every single state in every single county like you said has different like Josh Clark one day say he said. Has different ways of doing things so if you say that about this then no no state has a. A free election or a fair election or whatever everything is called into question right and that can't be the case.

The other concurring decision was even more important. And I think we said it was seven to two because Breyer and Souter actually, as quote unquote liberal justices cited with the quote unquote conservative side, which is so weird because it's such a bad legal argument. I know. I don't know. Well, it's interesting. Maybe it wasn't Souter or Breyer than that said what I said. It was probably John Paul Stevens. Yeah, I think it was Stevens. But the concurring, and this is really the most important decision, which was a 5'4 ruling on, you know, I know they're supposed to be impartial,

but there were five conservative justices at the time for liberal justices and it ended up a 5'4 concurrent ruling that not only can you not do do the recount but like there's no time and because of uh... what's called save harbor which is this date uh... a deadline for states to resolve issues over the selection of their state electors and that was approaching uh... whereas the liberal justice is said well hold on

that doesn't mean that's not when they cast their vote at the electoral college. There's still six days after that. There's plenty, A, there's plenty of time to do that. And B, had you not issued a state to begin with, they would be done by now, probably, and we wouldn't have even been called on.

So we ended up causing a problem with this state that we are now ruling on by instituting that stay. They caused the problem. It's just perfectly put. They caused the problem that they were saying was the problem and the reason that they were saying you have to stop the recount. It's too late.

Isn't that nuts? Yeah. RBG and her very famously in her descent usually say, I respectfully descent. And she just said, I descent, which was done sound like a big deal, but those words matter. And it was a big deal. And she was also like saying, hey, wait a minute, this contradicts all of our federalist principles that this is a state matter. And that we shouldn't get involved with this to begin with. So it was a not only a landmark ruling, but one that was just

fraught with upset on all sides up and down the political spectrum and to the citizens of the United States. Even more suspiciously, there's a really great article from the Nevada law journal from 2012 written by Marques Broden. And he points out there was a lot of books written about this afterward. And he said that at least three of the conservative justices had like personal, what's it called when you're supposed to recuse yourself?

I guess conflicts of interest. Yeah, yeah. One was that Scalia's son's law firm was arguing the case and friend of the Supreme Court for the Bush side. Yeah. Another was that Clarence Thomas' wife, Ginny, was looking for, was like accepting resumes on behalf of the Heritage Foundation

to set up a Bush administration. And then thirdly, I think Sandra Day O'Connor. Yeah, she was trying to retire, I think. Yes, she wanted to retire. So she didn't want Goa to win because she didn't want to have to stay on for four more years so that a Democrat wouldn't pick her replacement.

So these three had like actual like personal vested interests in the outcome of this election. Three of the five did at least. And even putting that aside, the fact that the Supreme Court got involved in the first place was a terrible idea. The fact that they decided the election was a terrible idea, the legal idea that they ruled on was terrible, and then the idea that anybody had even an eye-oda of personal interest in the outcome was a really big deal.

And today the Supreme Court is definitely under question as far as political activism's concerned. And I'm sure it has been for a while, but it really feels like common knowledge these days. Yeah. In 2000, that was really new. That was a really big deal. People thought very, very differently

about the Supreme Court in 2000 compared to how they think about them today. Yeah. And on those, a couple of things you mentioned, um, Scalia's son, who was part of the law firm that argued the bush case, he, uh, very soon after the election was given a cabinet position, right? Right. Uh, and Sandra Day O'Connor, this isn't just speculation that she wanted to retire. Like, wasn't she, it was either on tape or like, people that were with her when they called it initially for Gore, like said, she was like, all crap basically. Yeah. Like, this means I got to work another four years. She said, this was, this is, this is terrible. And her husband explained

that they had been planning on retiring, but now she couldn't if Gore won. All right. So just want to clear up that wasn't just like, you know, I'm some of the pain that we're loving out there. Right. And then sorry, there's one more legal thing that Gore camp really dropped the ball because legally, the Bush campaign had no legal standing in this matter. They weren't the Indra Party.

The Indra Party was the potentially disenfranchised voters. They weren't the injured party. The injured party was the potentially disenfranchised voters of Florida, not the Bush campaign, so the Bush campaign had no standing to bring this case to the Supreme Court in the first place. And the Gore team didn't even mention it. And that might have been the thing that put enough public pressure on the Supreme Court to just toss it and say, no, whatever the Florida Supreme Court said stays. And they just dropped the ball that hard. Yeah. And this isn't a surmising because we're not smart enough, legally speaking, like, multitudes

of legal scholars have come out and said, like, why didn't they argue standing? Like that, that was what would have changed the outcome. Yeah. It's crazy. How many just small things would have changed the outcome? Let's talk about that. Uh, sure. It's crazy how many just small things would have changed the outcome. Let's talk about that. Sure. So Libya appropriately calls this autopsy report because after something like this, they don't just go, all right, well, that was that went as it should go and everything was super

smooth. I mean, regardless of who won or lost, if it would have been gourd, it would have been same thing. It would have been like boy, what a mess. Right. This is not how elections are supposed to be decided in the United States. So afterward, there were all kinds of studies, all kinds of people writing legal papers and just really studying the data. The University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center, which is an independent organization.

They did a review and they said, what we found out was that more Florida voters attempted to vote for Gore, but enough of them like, you know, marked their ballots inappropriately. And that not only that, but like each side would try to do things that would have hurt their own camp. Like, I believe it was Gore was trying to get these four counties hand-recounted. That actually would have ended up helping Bush. At one point, Bush was trying to make the detached at two corners vote count. That would have helped Gore. It was just a big play to spaghetti as far as the time, because they were all just sort of

very quickly in real time reacting to things that they never thought they would have to react to and sometimes doing things that would have even hurt their chances at winning. Yeah, and another study found that just in Palm Beach County alone, the overvotes, people who voted for more than one person, where there were just two, the ones that went to that included PEP you can in, they decided about 75% of those were because of ballot design. And I think 2,000 votes would have gone to Al Gore, which would have flipped the entire state, because George Bush won Florida by 537 votes, right? So it's not 100% clear what would have happened because even if that recount would have gone

on, other studies have shown like, no, actually Bush might have still won based on the autopsy we conducted. So it's still in 2023, not clear who actually won the 2000 election. Yeah, and if you're asking yourself like, all right Florida had a law in place about intent to vote as like that's what matters. One way that you can measure intent is like to look at that Chad and see, you know, it was clearly trying to be punched for a candidate.

Another way you can do that is as a right to remedy. You can get in touch with people and say, all right, you got another chance, it looks like you marked your ballot in an inconsistent way. Try again, and they did this in different counties, in some counties in Florida, which it really helped, it led to an error rate of less than 1%. But in the only predominantly black county in the state of Florida at the time, Gadsden County, they did not allow them to remedy the ballots and there was a 12.4% invalidated ballot rate compared to under 1%. So there's just hinky stuff going on all

over the place. Yeah. And Bushfeet Gore is like a toxic zombie legal case that won't die and should have never happened in the first place, but there is a really strange appendage to that that we've talked about before. I think in our Supreme Court precedent, judicial precedence episode. Yeah, I think so. Where they said that it's limited to the present circumstances. And as that Mark Bowden guy wrote in the Nevada Law Review, they basically attached like a warning sign, like warning do not use this as precedent. Essentially Supreme Court's just deciding the president here and it this doesn't apply to any other ruling because it shouldn't have happened anyway in the first place, right? And yet it's

still cited as precedent all over the place. It's it's it's cited by both sides actually even though it shouldn't be whatsoever. And that's just one of this kind of afterlife of the 2000 election that's still going on. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of things have changed since then. Ralph Nader, for the green party, certainly did not win any friends on the left because he got close to 100,000 votes in Florida, you know, most of which probably would have gone to Al Gore. And he ran again, even though everyone was like, I love you, Nader, but stop screwing up the elections if you're a Democrat. Right. And he was like, yeah, no, Kerry, you know, I believe in what I'm doing.

And so he ran again in 2004, you know, as far as mounting a third party bid that it's certainly put a damper on that. A lot of people will say the two party system being so locked in stone is one of the big problems in this country. And another thing that happened was states immediately were like, oh boy, we can't do this again. Florida for sure. And other states were like these punch cards. We got to get into the, we got to get with the times here and have a more secure way of voting than just people punching a card like it's 1875.

You will see no more chads. All these changes, sort of nationwide from state to state, culminated in the most recent 2020 election wherein Donald Trump's own Department of Homeland Security and Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency said was the most secure election in American history with no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised. So thankfully so many changes were put in place to make sure something like this didn't happen again. Yeah, and the electoral college is kind of this weird wonky thing that happened in the background until 2000.

And it really kind of brought to the fore like what a potent and also undemocratic institution this is. And so a lot of people are like, we need to get rid of this thing. And apparently in 2020, Paul by the Pew Organization, 58% of American adults said they would support a constitutional amendment that said the electoral college is no envoyed. Well, you're never going to get that on about it. I don't know, man. I don't know. I don't understand why it's not already. It is such an enormous problem. Yeah, I wish there were more, what do you call those referendums? Yeah. Where they would just let human,

the American public vote on things rather than people to decide the things. Well, that's what's been going on with abortion access. They've been strategically purposefully getting them on ballots that don't have other politicians to get people to just vote on the one issue. On an issue. It is a great idea because then you actually see what the people actually think about it.

I think that's a great idea too, Chuck. However, any of it goes, let people decide because I think we've all seen that elected representatives, you know, they don't always necessarily reflect the will of their people, you know what I'm saying? No, and another thing is, I mean, pretty much everybody on both sides can point to Congress and be like, you guys don't do enough these days. If voters voted on referenda, then, you know, the voters could do the work that Congress is supposed to be doing, passing laws.

Yeah, well, they don't want to do that because one of those first referenda would be term limits. And they're like, oh, no, let's not do that. Are you got anything else? Oh, man, I've got nothing else. I can't wait till next November. That's going to be a lot of fun. I don't know if I can do it Chuck.

Um, well since Chuck's just laughed at my pain, I think everybody is time for listener mail. Oh, this one's a great one. This is from Dan, uh, Sheeplin. And Dan, well, I'm just gonna read it. This is pretty amazing. Okay. I hope you saw this one if not. You should go look it up.

Okay. Hey guys, as I write you, I'm in sconce in the warm cab of a caterpillar tractor, jostling along the snow covered Ross-I-shelf on my way to the Amundsen Scott South Pole Station. I did not see this. This is cool. He included a picture of this caravan. Five days ago when we left, Mika Murdo station on Ross Island, the starting point of the South Pole, traversed. We were 1,038 miles from the South Pole. My current ground speed is 7.1 miles per hour, which is a pretty good pace. Our speed can be much slower at times depending on snow and a variety of

other conditions. There are 14 of us who embarked on this 25-30-day journey. Each in our own tractor, hauling mostly fuel to resupply the South Pole station, but also cargo and the living modules where we eat and sleep and use the bathroom. Our toilet is called the Ensenolet, and you guessed it, it's a turd-burning rig, very glamorous. So there are, in these tractorsors just slow rolling it to the South Pole. That's a main... ...deliver supplies and fuel.

That's really amazing stuff. Uh, he, he had a picture of this caravan. It's so cool. Uh, as you can imagine, have a lot of time sitting in this tractor, and quite a bit of that time is dedicated to listening to podcasts. Yours included. Been a faithful listener since 2010. Uh, we have a whiteboard inside our galley and a post daily, a podcast recommendation.

And today I put up naked mole rats, a face only a mother could love. Because that one blew my mind, guys. How can they be so interesting? And that's from Dan Schifflin, and he says big shout out to his wife, Marcie, as well as the guys on the traverse. So, man, you don't think about people out there doing these wacky jobs, but Dan and the gang out there on the slow train are doing it. That's really cool.

Thanks a lot, Dan, shout out to Marcy, for putting up with Dan driving around the South Pole on the slow train. Yeah. And thanks for the picture too, Dan. I'm looking for I can't find it right now. So send it to me where he picture too Dan. I'm looking for I can't find it right now so send it to me where you chuck. I will.

If you want to be like Dan and just blow our minds with a picture of where you are or some info about what you do, we would love that. You can blow our minds by wrapping that information up into an email and sending it off to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Tune in to the new podcast, Stories from the Village of Nothing Much.

Like easy listening, but for fiction. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you. I'm Catherine Nicolai, and I'm an architect of COSI. Come spend some time where everyone is welcome and the default is kindness. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from the village of nothing much. On the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Prop from the Hill of Politics for Prop Podcasts. And this what we do here, we take all these highfalutin political ideas and things in the news and explain it to you in the language that we all speak in. Just like, I don't know, take filibuster. Believe it or not, you already know what that is, because if you got a mama that don't

play no games, you can filibuster in your whole life. Hey mom, no look, listen, listen, listen, listen, before you make your decision, what had happened was everything said after that is filibuster, you just trying to stall her out to avoid the inevitable. Congress do it all the time. See you already knew. So listen to her, pilot six, we're prop on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

It's a weird world out there, so lean into the weirdness with the stuff to blow your mind podcast. Explore the nature of dreams and how dreaming has influenced culture. Appreciate the deep strangeness of terrestrial biology, as well as purely imagine creatures that reveal much about human nature. Explore topics scientific, historical, philosophical, and sometimes monstrous on stuff to blow your mind. Listen to the stuff to blow your mind on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.