Word: errors
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...point," says the expert, "is that we're in the 'noise' [meaning in an inarticulate zone of error where the truth is unknowable] if we get down to a few hundred votes separating Bush and Gore. The technology simply cannot be expected to correctly represent the count, no matter what 'rules' you come up with for counting hanging and dimpled chads...
...full answer. For one thing, an amendment to remove the College would never receive support from three-fourths of the states, as small states receive more electoral votes per capita than their larger peers. For another, popular votes would have a greater chance of fraud or ballot error, as 200,000 fraudulent votes nationwide would be less noticeable than 19,000 errant ballots in Palm Beach County...
...world's greatest economic powerhouse, cradle of the information age, was counting ballots by hand. One hundred million people had voted, and the outcome danced in the margin of error. There were murmurs from all over the country, not just in Florida, of broken voting machines and missing registrations and disappearing ballot boxes and intimidation and confusion, a growing conviction among true believers on both sides that this prize was about to be stolen. The sleep-deprived commentariat talked of a country divided and a constitutional crisis looming, which may not have been true, but it didn't hurt ratings...
...News called Florida, and thus the presidency, for Bush. Soon every network rolled the President Bush graphics; the crowd whooped in Austin; and Gore called Bush to concede. Newspapers prepared BUSH WINS! front pages that would leave them black, white and red-faced all over. And the error traveled across news websites like a virus (including, for a while, TIME's). "Unless there is a terrible calamity," ABC's Peter Jennings called it, "George W. Bush, by our projections, is going to be the next President...
...next line was between machine counts and hand counts. In the case of serious machine error, of course Harris would use that discretion of hers to include a manual recount to be included in the total. But in the absence of anything that compelling, it was up to her. (This one appeared not to sit well with Justice Peggy Quince, who seemed to grasp the Democratic argument that a hanging-chad ballot could pass through the machine unread without it really being "machine error" - but was still a vote deserving of tabulation...