Historical Election

Historical Election Paper

The 2000 election took place on November 7, 2000 with the competitors being George W. Bush and Al Gore. This election changed the face of voting history.

I tried to decide what topic would be best when choosing a historical election. I recently turned 18, but I have never been into politics. I never understood why people were elected, who gets elected, and what their party was. As I have gotten older, I have realized how important politics really are. Before the 2000 election, I do not think I was old enough to understand the effects of an election on America.

This presidential election was important in American history because there was an official recount of votes the race was so close. Al Gore even called Bush at 3:00 a.m. to congratulate him and concede. However, once he realized how close the votes were he automatically requested a recount. The recounts continued for quite some time. Bush presented written arguments to the U.S. federal appeals court in Atlanta to end the manual recounts. Gore filed a counter motion. The recount continued until December 13, where in a televised speech, Gore conceded and Bush accepted the Presidency. It was not until January 20 that Bush was sworn in as the 43rd President of the United States. It affected the American public in so many ways and I think it made us appreciate voting more. I know I will not take voting for granted.

This election was unique and historical. It was only the fourth time in United States history that a candidate won, but lost the popular vote. The only other times this had occurred were in the election of 1824, 1876, and 1888. Another rare event in this election was the fact that Al Gore lost his home state of Tennessee. If Gore had won Tennessee, he would not have needed Florida to win. Gore was the first presidential candidate to lose his home state since George McGovern, who lost his home state of South Dakota in 1972.

The people involved in this election were George W. Bush and Al Gore. I think many other people got involved in the process, I know that on a local level, everyone was involved. I can remember seeing signs everywhere promoting the election. Teachers were involved and mainly the state of Florida was involved. The NAACP also got involved. NAACP filed a suit that claimed that Florida was in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the United States Constitution’s Equal Protection Amendment. However, after investigation by the Civil Rights division of the U.S. Department of Justice found no evidence of racial discrimination. Another controversy was the fact that many overseas ballots were not counted. The Republicans argued that these votes should have been counted because the majority of the overseas ballots were military ballots. The Democrats wanted all overseas ballots to be