Bush v Gore Supreme Court

In class this last week, we talked a bit about the election between Bush v Gore and what Gore regrets from his mistakes. But something that I think we brushed over was the importance of the election which was essentially the role that the Supreme Court played in it. 

As we know, the election was extremely close and it all depended on who would win Florida. Initially, the vote was in favor of Bush, but only by a small margin of less than 2000 votes. Thus, because the difference was so small, a recount was issued which brought the margin even closer to only 327 votes. In a state with the population of more than 20 million, only 327 was amazingly close. Then it was revealed that not all the districts complied with the recount meaning that Gore could have still won. Therefore, he requested that more districts recount, but many argued that the deadline, of November 14, was an impossible task to meet because of complications in recounting and the time it would take. Therefore, only one district had submitted their recount at the deadline. Luckily for Gore, the Florida Supreme Court intervened and said that the recount date could be pushed back to November 26 instead and later, ordered a statewide manual recount. 

Gore had a chance, maybe he could actually win the election. But then again there's a reason why Bush became president instead of Gore: the US Supreme Court. In a 5-4 decision where justices mostly voted along party lines, the Supreme Court ended the recount, thus awarding the presidency to Bush. This was the only time that the Supreme Court effectively decided the election and the decision was heavily criticized for many reasons. First of all, many people did not believe that the Supreme Court should be involved in a situation where the Florida Supreme Court had already ruled, especially considering this was a state level affair. People were also upset because the, as said before, the Supreme Court decided the election. They voted along party lines and thus because the court was a majority Republican, Bush became president. Some argued that this was a sure sign of corruption, in a branch that was traditionally supposed to be unbiased. Personally, I didn't know about this election until I learned about it in USHAP but I thought that it was interesting to see the one time that the Supreme Court was so heavily involved in US elections.