The Final Decision is now in your hands...
The two main presidential candidates in 2000 were Vice President Albert Gore, Jr. and Governor George W. Bush.
The U.S. Constitution requires that each state choose electors who will pick the president. Every state gets to decide how electors are picked, but in the year 2000 every state chooses its electors by a popular vote.
According to the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, each state is supposed to appoint electors "on the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November." In the year 2000, that means Election Day was November 7.
That night, the electoral totals of the two main candidates were extremely close, until the ultimate decision depended on Florida and the 25 electoral votes that state would bestow. Florida seemed to sway back and forth, and a preliminary tally gave the state to Governor Bush by a slim margin -- just a few thousand votes out of about six million.
A re-count was required by law, and Florida voters in some counties demanded a "re-vote" because of an odd-looking and possibly illegal ballot that may have confused them into voting for the wrong candidate.
There will be a long wait in Florida -- with a possible second vote, a wait for absentee ballots, and lawsuits to contest irregularities and improprieties. In fact, the ultimate decision in Florida cannot be made any earlier than November 17, when the final foreign absentee ballots have been received and counted.
That said, there are only three possible outcomes of Florida's vote...
| What is the decision in Florida? |
(1) If you want the final decision from Florida to go to Governor Bush, along with that state's 25 Electoral College votes, click here.
(2) If you want Florida to go to Al Gore instead, click here.
(3) There is a third option. If, in the course of deciding lawsuits, it is discovered that there were too many irregularities in Florida for the vote to be trustworthy one way or the other, Florida's Secretary of State Katherine Harris can choose not to "certify" the state's votes. That means neither Gore nor Bush will receive the 25 Electoral College votes. To see what would happen in that circumstance, click here.