...Democracy: Alive in America? Everyone is nervously awaiting the final decision of the year 2000 Presidential election with George W. Bush and Al A. Gore running closely side by side. There was debate in the legitimacy of the electoral votes cast in Florida earlier in time, so the suspense rising in America’s final decision is enormous. Looks like Gore holds this trophy for popular votes with a close 543,895 votes winning over Bush. According to previous elections, Gore has this competition conquered, the results come in; George W. Bush is our new president! With a slim win by 5 electoral votes, Bush is our new president. Wait a second, popular vote is that not the votes of qualified voters of the population? In America today, political decisions are decided democratically by its residents. Although Al Gore won the popular vote, George Bush is still the decided president. Then what is democracy, where did it come from, is our current democratic society a progression or is it a regression of democracy’s evolution? America has a government decided by the population of America; at least that is of the idea of a democratic society. Let us then compare American democracy to where democracy was created. The reason why everyone votes is to make a unanimous decision of who will become the leaders of a country. Democracy is just that, a government where the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation...
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...The 2000 presidential election in which Al Gore won the popular votes and George W. Bush, the electoral vote, dramatized that parties care more about your vote depending upon where you live. Cuban Americans have a huge influence in national politics because of their concentration in the state of Florida. Florida is the state where the 2000 presidential election hung in the balance. The 2000 presidential election was one of the closest races in history. The original design of our federal system of government was thoroughly and wisely debated by the founding fathers and proposing a process that has been around for the last 150 years is probably more complex than any of us think. In the majority of states, the candidate having the majority of votes acquires all the electoral votes of the state. A few states hold the history of voting consistently Democrat or Republican. The system of the Electoral College offers power to the small, less populated states and traditionally those smaller states have privileged the Republican Party. I am in favor of replacing the Electoral College because currently it violates the principle of one person, one vote. "One person, one vote" or "one man, one vote" means legislative districts need to be divided according to population, so that each person (and each interest) has an equal amount of representation in government. Furthermore, the addition of two electors to each state, for its senators produces significant distortions in how much...
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...Yiwen Yao ENGL 212 7/14/2015 Original Letter in New York Times: More Than a Celebrity To the Sports Editor: Re “Portraying Bill Bradley, a Star Who Had a Sense of Where He Was,” March 29: As Bradley himself has acknowledged, the pressure of celebrity, to be all things to all people, at an age when most of us are just finding our way, was stifling. One reason he decamped to Oxford was to escape its grasp. I’ve always believed that the hallmark of Bradley’s career is not excellence per se, but his willingness to push beyond mere celebrity, to think for himself and find his own voice. Like Bradley said, “You’re also always working on who you are.” VIVEK VISWANATHAN, Palo Alto, Calif. Premise:” He decamped to Oxford was to escape its grasp.” Conclusion:” The pressure of celebrity, to be all things to all people, at an age when most of us are just finding our way, was stifling.” No argument:” I’ve always believed that the hallmark of Bradley’s career is not excellence per se, but his willingness to push beyond mere celebrity, to think for himself and find his own voice.” Rewrite: More Than a Celebrity To the Sports Editor: Re “Portraying Bill Bradley, a Star Who Had a Sense of Where He Was,” March 29: As Bradley himself has acknowledged, the pressure of celebrity, to be all things to all people, at an age when most of us are just finding our way, was stifling. Because he decamped to Oxford was to escape its grasp. The reason why Bradley said “You’re...
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...Professor Class Due date Background The year 2000 election was the most closely contested of all presidential elections in the United States. The election involved strong candidates George Bush and Al Gore of Republican and Democratic parties respectively. The closeness of the race gave rise to an election petition challenging the election of George Bush as president. At the epicenter of the crisis was the state of Florida where the democrats complained of election malpractices that was aimed at favoring the Republican candidate. The conflict heightened and the Florida Supreme Court took the matter as required by the legislative laws of the state. The court argued that the democrats had enough reasons to warrant a recount of votes. The reasons for the recount, as stated by the democrats were that the Republicans worked with the state governor to deny Democratic Party followers a chance to vote. According to the court, the agents at certain precincts did not allow some ethnic minorities to vote or required too many documents such as passports against the elections laws of the state of Florida. In addition, the case was argued that some of the officials left the polling stations early leaving out some voters. Upon hearing the complaints from all parties, the Florida Supreme court ordered afresh recount of votes all over the state of Florida by a 4-3 vote. Consequently, multiple court proceedings arose on the same issue of elections. He US supreme court took over the matter and...
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...v. GORE, 531 U.S. 98, 148 L.Ed.2d 388 (2000) Facts: In 2000, Al Gore, the former Vice President of the United States was facing George W. Bush for the presidential election. On December 8th of 2000, a local court in the state of Florida forced the city of Palm Beach to manually recount almost 10,000 ballots. This recount was imposed because the voters in Florida had problems with the state’s electronic voting machines. This problem was amplified because the ballots were not properly punched, a large number of ballots did not reveal who the voter intended to vote for. The reason for the manual recount was the result of malfunctioning ballot machines and the suspicion that some of the members of the ballot counting committee were not being honest in their attempts to tally the votes. After losing the state of Florida and ultimately the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore petitioned that the ballots be recounted in a formal case, filed before the Circuit Court of Florida. After this filing, he won, and a manual recount was enacted. But then, the Bush team filed for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court on the basis that the Florida court’s opinion was contrary to the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court reasoned that state of Florida violated the 14th Amendment by enacting a recounting procedure. Procedural History: Originally Gore won his case and the ballots were manually recounted; however, George W. Bush explained that the manual recount undermined the 14th Amendment to the United...
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...The 2000 presidential election was contested by the U.S. Vice President Al Gore (D) and Texas Governor George W. Bush (R). On the evening of November 7, 2000 there was no clear winner in the Presidential Election. It was evident around the time the results were being calculated that the vote would be extremely close. In fact, the results from the state of Florida were believed to determine the overall winner of the election. There were less than 600 votes that were to establish the winner. When the votes were cast and counted, George W. Bush was declared the winner. However, there were reports of many issues with the ballots in Florida which led to many questions regarding the validity of the outcome. It was clear that Gore won the popular...
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...In 2000, the election of Al Gore versus Bush took place. This is considered one of the most important elections because it shows the power that the Supreme Court holds. Obviously, everyone in the US knows that Bush won the presidency. I believe that this is due to the Supreme Court not speaking with one voice, but coming to a 5-4 vote to that allows Florida’s recount to continue but by the this was determined, it was too late. Therefore, the Supreme Court automatically handed the election to Bush. In the movie, Recount, it is explained after a statewide recount Gore’s campaign demanded that, “Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Volusia Counties be recounted by hand”. Because these three counties were counting by hand the problem surrounding...
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...College: How Our System of Elections Needs to be Changed Richard Brookman Metropolitan State University of Denver Author Note This paper was prepared for ENG 1020, Section 031, taught by Professor Clark. Abstract Article two, section one of the Constitution details the creation and operation of the Electoral College. Each representative of each state, both senators and representatives, cast a vote for the President based on the wants of their constituents. This is the basis for the Electoral College; however our forefathers had little insight into the problems that can arise from crafting a quick solution to the problem of electing the commander-in-chief. Over the past 200 years, many changes have been made to the Electoral College when a problem has risen to give us the Electoral College of today. The people of the United States have seen what the Electoral College has become and want the election process to change into a popular vote system. The popular vote system isn’t the answer. Only a combination of the two systems will help to give fair representation to all of the states, while keeping the essence of majority rule that the people desire. This system includes a single vote for districts that are won by popular vote, getting rid of the human form of electors, and using today’s technology to make it easier to maneuver through the complexities of the voting process. The Electoral College: How Our System of Elections Needs to be Changed ...
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...question opened up even more doors for the spreading evangelical movement. Sekulow had forever changed American law and how cases that this would be viewed. In the 2000 presidential election the Supreme Court showed it’s flaws. When the votes came though for the state of Florida it was originally declared a the state a victory for Al Gore. The first official count put George Bush ahead of Gore by just 1,784 votes. Because of how close it was Florida law said that a recount was needed. After the recount had been completed Bush’s margin of Gore had been cut to just 327 votes. Both Gore’s and Bush’s staffs had never had to deal with a problem like this before. Both staffs focused in on what became known as the “Palm Beach County controversy”. In Palm Beach there were a large number of elderly voters. So in order to make it easier for many of them to read the ballot the font was changed from a side of ten to a size to twelve. This cased the name of Patrick Buchanan (conservative independent candidate) to be in the second spot instead of the third. This resulted in Buchanan receiving far more votes then he had reviewed in any other county. Buchanan himself said that many of the votes he received in Palm Beach were most likely intended for Gore. In a race this close no one knew what to do. Gore’s staff asked for a manual recount of four Florida counties: Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Volusia. The Gore staff did not file a lawsuit but used what was known under Florida’s law as “filing...
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...The American Electoral College purpose is to select a presidential candidate. The most popular vote does not technically elect the president but the electors in the Electoral College vote for their respective states wishes. Electoral College elects the President and the Vice President of America. The Electoral College is the electors from each State and it comes together every four years to select the President and the Vice President of America. It is an American tradition and it is constitutionally required to exist, so therefore it should remain in place. Electoral College puts focus on swing states and allows them to get massive attention by the presidential candidates. Less populated states votes count, bigger states like NY, TX, and CA...
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...Val Collins US Gov Period 2 3/20/2018 Presidential Election of 2000 The presidential election that took place between George W. Bush and Al Gore was not legitimate. The recount that was stopped by the supreme court may have ended with Gore with the most votes. The latest figures that were published on December 21,2000 recalled that Gore had 50,996,064 votes, while George W. Bush had 50,456,167 votes. The number of votes were very close to each other. Bush had lost the vote by 539,897 which would have been close to the amount of people who would have voted...
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...Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000) Judicial history On Nov. 8 2000, the day after the presidential election, it was shown that Governor Bush received 2,907,135 votes and 2,907,351 for vice president Gore with a difference of 1,784 in favor of Governor Bush. Because it was a win of a half a percent there was a recount using a machine which bush was still the winner but by a small amount. Gore demanded a manual recount in several counties that were later found out only democratic states were asked to revote. Some of those counties worried that they wouldn’t make the deadline and asked for an extension. The secretary of state declined that extension and the supreme court of Florida over turned that decision and granted more time until nov.26th. On that day Govern Bush won. They next day Gore filed a complaint in the Leon County circuit court saying that there were still illegal votes. After they ruled that he did not give enough burden of prove he then appealed and Florida Supreme Court took jurisdiction of the case and held some points in the case and rejected some. They ordered a hand account of 9,000 ballots in Miami Dade County. Facts On December 8, 2000, the Supreme Court ordered the Circuit court of Leon County to gather 9,000 ballots by hand and include 215 voted from Palm Beach County and 168 votes for Vice president Gore. Bush said that the vote for gore was 176. The court ordered manual voting for the counties that had “under votes” and Bush contested it through an...
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...Day O’Connor was one of four justices to rule on the case of Bush v. Gore. This is a case concerning the miscalculations of votes in four counties in the State of Florida. These votes had to be recounted several times. All ballots had to be verified that they were correctly marked with no question on how the voter intended to vote. The vote for 2000 Presidential Candidate was up for debate. The parties of the current President George Bush and Al Gore were at odds. The largest county in Florida had to recount and verify each and every vote cast in the election. There were numerous hours and thousands of dollars spent to come to an agreeable conclusion. To solve this election question, there were several suits brought before the Court system, one being Bush v. Gore due to the interpretation of the Florida election law. Something needed to be decided to stop the recounts. Ballots had to be electronically recounted and manually recounted. Mrs. O’Connor along with fellow justices found that the manual recounts of the votes taken were not covered under the Fourteenth Amendment Clause for Equal Protection. After all recounts and the Supreme Court decisions, George W. Bush was named the 43rd President of the United States. This would also be President Bush’s second term in office. I agree with...
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...proceedings and verdict. Every human being has a certain set of morals and beliefs that they hold to be an important part of their character. This is no different for the judges of the Supreme Court. They too have a set of morals and beliefs that they live by. The difference is that their job description says that they have to make decisions not based on their morals and beliefs, but their decisions must be based on the rule of law. It is obvious to me that many of the judges on the Supreme Court, did not follow their job description and instead of basing their decision of Bush vs. Gore on the rule of law, they based it on who they voted for. Every conservative on that panel voted to stop the recount which in turn helped Bush win, and every liberal on the panel voted to continue the recount which would have given Gore a chance at winning. The concurring opinion of the majority seems to make it evident in some of the arguments they make that their opinion was based on politics and not on law. Much of the evidence they bring up only seems to...
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...results are truly accurate or a miscalculation. The best way to solve this problem is to no longer use any by optical scanners, punch cards, or touch screens and make voting possible online. Internet voting seems like the most logical answer to the current problems faced by these machines and punch cards. It is also possible to have internet voting while ensuring that the votes are accurate. New voting technologies tend to emerge out of crises of confidence as seen prominently in the 2000 presidential election. We only rarely change systems and in response to a public anxiety that electoral results can no longer be trusted. There have been many incidents where previous voting machines have failed and made the results untrustworthy. A perfect example of one major incident is the 2000 presidential election in Florida. During that election year the votes from Florida were “too close to call” and had to be counted once and recounted again after that. Recounts could easily be required for elections where optical scanners or...
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