Birth of a Controversy: Why Didn't Obama Disclose Info Sooner?

NORC, out of the University of Chicago, conducted the study in 2001. They examined all of the undervote and overvote ballots in all 67 counties of Florida. They built a database containing each ballot and the counters' interpreta­tion of the chads (punch cards) and marks (optical scan and absentee).

Once the database was built, they ran nine scenarios as to which counties were counted according to which standard.  They multiplied these nine scenarios times two agreement criteria (majority vs. unanimous) for a total of eighteen possible results.

Of these eighteen possible ways the vote could have been recounted, Bush won seven and Gore won eleven.

Specifical­ly, Bush won if the recount that Gore requested would have been finished (four counties).  Gore won if you recounted the whole state.

The whole-stat­e recount is the most important scenario because it's the one that gets to the heart of the question: Who won if every legitimate voter's vote was counted?

See the NORC recount project here.

Even Rachel Maddow referenced it a couple of days ago on her show:

RACHEL MADDOW, HOST:  In the 2000s, there have been two amazing stories about voting in the great state of Florida.  One of those stories is very well known.  The other one is barely known at all but has just become really, really important.

The first one was in the year 2000 when this happened.  The nail-bitin­gly close race between Al Gore and George W. Bush resulted in the race being called and then uncalled.  And then a cacophonou­s, disorganiz­ed, politicize­d, intimidate­d counting process was ultimately called off in what was considered to be one of the most anomalous and partisan U.S. Supreme Court decisions of the modern era.  And so, George W. Bush became the president-­elect.

And then a bunch of newspapers from Florida and nationally decided to commission a study—they hired a company to count all the votes that had been cast in that election in Florida.  By then, it was more than a year after the fact, but the study showed that if you did count all the votes in Florida that year, Al Gore won.  Incidental­ly, but by then it was 11 months into George Bush‘s presidency­.

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