{"id":34929,"date":"2025-11-05T21:56:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T21:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/34929\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T21:56:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T21:56:08","slug":"floridas-2000-election-chaos-led-to-nationwide-reforms-put-capital-city-in-national-spotlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/34929\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida\u2019s 2000 election chaos led to nationwide reforms, put capital city in national spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV\/Gray Florida Capital Bureau) &#8211; For 36 days in 2000, the world watched Florida election workers examine ballot after ballot, trying to determine the fate of the presidency.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The 2000 presidential election was the last time Florida\u2019s 25 electoral college votes were truly up for grabs. A media frenzy in Tallahassee waited for more than a month to see if Al Gore or George W. Bush would be the next president.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">As the United States celebrates 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, WCTV and its parent company, Gray Media, are taking a moment to celebrate our local history. Our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wctv.tv\/community\/we-the-people\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.wctv.tv\/community\/we-the-people\/\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cWe The People\u201d<\/a> series commemorates and honors local history in the Big Bend and South Georgia.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Mike Vasalinda, a journalist who covered the Florida Capitol for nearly 50 years, said the election marked one of the most memorable moments in their career. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cIt was the most incredible thing I\u2019ve ever seen around the Capitol,\u201d Vasalinda said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The uncertainty created constant changes for reporters covering the story.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cYou might have had an idea of what your story was going to look like at 9 a.m., and by 9:30 it had changed and it changed every half hour until you actually had the story out,\u201d Vasalinda said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-center article-text\">More from WCTV\u2019s We The People series:<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The election required several recounts and rulings from state and federal supreme courts to determine that George Bush won. The final count showed Bush ahead by only 537 votes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Political analyst Susan MacManus said Florida\u2019s election system at the time failed voters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThe punch cards caused a lot of people to not vote or to vote twice. The ballot design, particularly in Palm Beach County, was such a lot of people were confused,\u201d MacManus said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The manual recounting process created additional confusion. Not all punches went completely through the ballots, leaving behind hanging chads. Election officials also lacked uniform standards for determining voter intent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThey were using different ways of measuring \u2018voter intent\u2019 once they started looking at the double-marked or under-vote ballots. And looking at those and revisiting those. That was a really big problem,\u201d MacManus said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Al Gore conceded to George W. Bush on Dec. 12, 2000.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The delays and failures changed elections across the country. Florida is now considered a model of election administration.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cIt\u2019s important to realize that things evolve and things, like anything else, you have to constantly look and re-look at election law and election equipment, election administration,\u201d MacManus said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">State lawmakers continue to discuss election integrity, with new election laws expected to be introduced during the next legislative session.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2025 WCTV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV\/Gray Florida Capital Bureau) &#8211; For 36 days in 2000, the world watched Florida election workers&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[24302,24303,24305,1442,3646,2811,24306,28,24304,24307,30,29,2161,99,24309,24308,4220,24301],"class_list":{"0":"post-34929","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-2000-election","9":"tag-bush-v-gore","10":"tag-bush-vs-gore-hanging-chads","11":"tag-cody-butler","12":"tag-democracy","13":"tag-election","14":"tag-election-administration-reforms","15":"tag-florida","16":"tag-florida-2000-election-recount","17":"tag-florida-electoral-votes","18":"tag-florida-headlines","19":"tag-florida-news","20":"tag-government","21":"tag-politics","22":"tag-presidential-election","23":"tag-tallahassee-election-chaos","24":"tag-voting","25":"tag-we-the-people"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}