All the reports from the press showed that had a recount of the entire state of Florida, including first time counts (and not “recounts”), on under votes, AND over votes, the latter required by law, but not even counted before the SCOTUS stopped the recount, Gore would have won.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/politics/12VOTE.html?pagewanted=2Note that the majority SCOTUS decision made explicitly clear that the over-riding of Florida state laws (to allow a state-wide recount, under the situation of Bush v. Gore) concerning elections was not to be construed for any other case as to the SCOTUS’s position on states rights. The SCOTUS overturned the Florida Supreme Court because the SCOTUS said that other state’s voters would be aggrieved because of the ruling of the Florida court. If that is not a federal usurpation of states rights, I do not know what the hell is. That the conservatives on the SCOTUS ruled in this case contrary to how they did in every other case involving states rights issues is the reason so many consider their decision purely political and not based upon the judicial philosophies that they expounded upon in their earlier comments from the bench and which they hold now.
The consortium examined 175,010 ballots that vote-counting machines had rejected last November. Those included so-called under votes, or ballots on which the machines could not discern a preference for president, and over votes, those on which voters marked more than one candidate.
The examination then sought to judge what might have been considered a legal vote under various conditions — from the strictest interpretation (a clearly punched hole) to the most liberal (a small indentation, or dimple, that indicated the voter was trying to punch a hole in the card). But even under the most inclusive standards, the review found that at most, 24,619 ballots could have been interpreted as legal votes.
The numbers reveal the flaws in Mr. Gore's post-election tactics and, in retrospect, why the Bush strategy of resisting county-by-county recounts was ultimately successful.
In a finding rich with irony, the results show that even if Mr. Gore had succeeded in his effort to force recounts of under votes in the four Democratic counties, Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Volusia, he still would have lost, although by 225 votes rather than 537. An approach Mr. Gore and his lawyers rejected as impractical — a statewide recount — could have produced enough votes to tilt the election his way, no matter what standard was chosen to judge voter intent.
Another complicating factor in the effort to untangle the result is the overseas absentee ballots that arrived after Election Day. A New York Times investigation earlier this year showed that 680 of the late- arriving ballots did not meet Florida's standards yet were still counted. The vast majority of those flawed ballots were accepted in counties that favored Mr. Bush, after an aggressive effort by Bush strategists to pressure officials to accept them.
A statistical analysis conducted for The Times determined that if all counties had followed state law in reviewing the absentee ballots, Mr. Gore would have picked up as many as 290 additional votes, enough to tip the election in Mr. Gore's favor in some of the situations studied in the statewide ballot review.
But Mr. Gore chose not to challenge these ballots because many were from members of the military overseas, and Mr. Gore did not want to be accused of seeking to invalidate votes of men and women in uniform.
If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards, and combined with the results of an examination of over votes, Mr. Gore would have won, by a very narrow margin.
For example, using the most permissive "dimpled chad" standard, nearly 25,000 additional votes would have been reaped, yielding 644 net new votes for Mr. Gore and giving him a 107-vote victory margin.
But the dimple standard was also the subject of the most disagreement among coders, and Mr. Bush fought the use of this standard in recounts in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami- Dade Counties. Many dimples were so light that only one coder saw them, and hundreds that were seen by two were not seen by three. In fact, counting dimples that three people saw would have given Mr. Gore a net of just 318 additional votes and kept Mr. Bush in the lead by 219.
Using the most restrictive standard — the fully punched ballot card — 5,252 new votes would have been added to the Florida total, producing a net gain of 652 votes for Mr. Gore, and a 115-vote victory margin.
All the other combinations likewise produced additional votes for Mr. Gore, giving him a slight margin over Mr. Bush, when at least two of the three coders agreed.
The Florida Supreme Court urged a statewide recount and ordered the state's 67 counties to begin a manual re-examination of the under votes in a ruling issued Dec. 8 that left Mr. Gore and his allies elated.
The Florida court's 4-to-3 ruling rejected Mr. Gore's plea for selective recounts in four Democratic counties, but also Mr. Bush's demand for no recounts at all. Justice Barbara Pariente, in her oral remarks, asked, "Why wouldn't it be proper for any court, if they were going to order any relief, to count the under votes in all of the counties where, at the very least, punch-card systems were operating?"
The court ultimately adopted her view, although extending it to all counties, including those using ballots marked by pen and read by optical scanning. Many counties immediately began the effort, applying different standards and, in some cases, including over votes.
The United States Supreme Court stepped in only hours after the counting began, issuing an injunction to halt. Three days later, the justices overturned the Florida court's ruling, sealing Mr. Bush's election.
Now, it is clear that Bush is in the White House, or somewhere on his ranch in Texas. But had the Florida Supreme Court’s directions been followed, neither Gore’s nor Bush’s wishes in the recount matter, nor then Gore would have won.
It can be contested that had the Florida Supreme Court accepted Gore’s recount request, he would have lost, and if the Florida Supreme Court had accepted Bush’s request, Gore would have lost as well.
However, the media consortium showed that had “over votes” been counted, Gore would have won under any of the examination methods used. And this is what the Florida judge involved in the case was demanding and what the Florida Supreme Court was demanding, viz., a recount that INCLUDED over votes.
The issue has been what the results would have been had not the SCOUTUS intervened and had the Florida Supreme Court’s order had been followed. In this case, Gore would have won.
These are irrefutable facts, and it is clear that the SCOUTUS handed the presidency to Bush, not the electorate.
on edit: i pulled this up from my old files. excuse the lack of quotation marks.