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The 2000 Presidential Election: A Real Cluster · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
0:13
Speaker 2: Chuck and it's just us again, which is fine because
0:16
Speaker 2: we're here to talk about the two thousand election. Jerry
0:19
Speaker 2: probably wouldn't want to hear about it anyway.
0:23
Speaker 1: Can I tell the quickest story of my how this
0:25
Speaker 1: went down for me?
0:26
Speaker 2: Sure?
0:28
Speaker 1: I was moving to Los Angeles in November twenty twenty.
0:31
Speaker 1: H and I mean two thousand, what I say twenty twenty? Yeah, yeah,
0:36
Speaker 1: two thousand.
0:37
Speaker 2: Weird that you had mentioned twenty twenty when you were
0:39
Speaker 2: talking about two thousand.
0:40
Speaker 1: I know.
0:41
Speaker 3: So I was in a big U haul.
0:42
Speaker 1: I was towing my car, my seventy five Plymouth Valiant
0:45
Speaker 1: named Ta, behind me, and I was somewhere in Texas,
0:49
Speaker 1: West Texas.
0:50
Speaker 3: When I spent the night and.
0:53
Speaker 1: Then woke up the next morning, it was kind of
0:55
Speaker 1: freezing cold in West Texas, and I was documenting this
0:58
Speaker 1: whole trip via my high eight video camera, singing songs
1:04
Speaker 1: into it and kind of documenting the journey. I'm gonna
1:07
Speaker 1: get all these tapes digitized soon. That's one of my
1:09
Speaker 1: Christmas break projects this year. But I very distinctly. Remember
1:13
Speaker 1: when I turned on the camera and got in that truck.
1:16
Speaker 1: The next morning, I said, hey everyone, So or I
1:18
Speaker 1: don't think I said everyone, because I had no audience.
1:21
Speaker 3: Spect Sure, so I think I said, hey me. It's weird.
1:26
Speaker 1: I went to bed last night and the election had happened,
1:30
Speaker 1: and I woke up today and no one knows who
1:33
Speaker 1: won still, And this is weird because we always know
1:36
Speaker 1: who won. I guess I'll see what happens. And then
1:40
Speaker 1: I hit the road.
1:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what thirty something days later it was finally decided.
1:47
Speaker 3: By the Supreme Court of the United States.
1:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was an interesting thing too that today you're like, yeah,
1:54
Speaker 2: I could see not knowing that that day, right, that
1:57
Speaker 2: seems a little a little quick, almost suspicious quick. Now.
2:01
Speaker 2: At the time, it was like, what do you mean,
2:03
Speaker 2: It's past midnight and we don't know who won. That's crazy.
2:07
Speaker 2: The two thousand election definitely started that whole thing. And
2:11
Speaker 2: the election, for those of you who don't know, was
2:14
Speaker 2: between Vice President Al Gore. He was vice president to
2:18
Speaker 2: Bill Clinton for both terms. He was looking to continue
2:21
Speaker 2: the Clinton legacy, I guess as president himself, and he
2:27
Speaker 2: was running against George W. Bush the son of George Bush,
2:32
Speaker 2: George H. W. Bush, and the brother of Jeb Bush.
2:35
Speaker 2: I think it's his older brother. And at the time,
2:39
Speaker 2: al Gore was viewed as this very wooden I think
2:42
Speaker 2: Jeb's younger okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry, Jeb's the younger brother.
2:47
Speaker 2: And at the time, al Gore was viewed as wooden, unapproachable,
2:51
Speaker 2: very smart policy wonk who could not relate to the
2:55
Speaker 2: average person to save his life. And George Bush was
2:59
Speaker 2: viewed as just this complete dingus who was a part
3:03
Speaker 2: of a political legacy, whose family clearly viewed him having
3:10
Speaker 2: the presidency as his birthright. That was the selection that
3:13
Speaker 2: America had at the time. But this is all against
3:16
Speaker 2: the backdrop of the economy really doing nicely and there
3:20
Speaker 2: hadn't been any really big problems or wars for a while.
3:25
Speaker 2: I can't really think of any direct war that the
3:29
Speaker 2: United States would have been involved in since Vietnam. Oh,
3:33
Speaker 2: like you know, big time war. Yeah, yeah, I don't
3:36
Speaker 2: think that. I think Vietnam was the last war we
3:38
Speaker 2: were in during this election.
3:40
Speaker 3: Yeah.
3:41
Speaker 1: So, you know, if you were watching comedy shows, especially
3:45
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live at the time, you would get two things.
3:48
Speaker 1: You would on one side you would get. I can't
3:52
Speaker 1: even remember who played him, but this is how al
3:54
Speaker 1: Gore was basically portrayed Aryl Hammond. Well, oh that's right.
3:59
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm like Bill Clinton without the scandal
4:03
Speaker 1: that was Al Gore. And then of course, I guess
4:06
Speaker 1: was Will Ferrell the first and Bush, you know, through
4:11
Speaker 1: comedy and the media was you know that guy, and yeah,
4:14
Speaker 1: I don't even I don't even care about being president. Yeah,
4:17
Speaker 1: I just want to make Daddy happy. That was sort
4:20
Speaker 1: of the lay of the land pre nine to eleven,
4:23
Speaker 1: before you know, a lot of the country rallied around
4:26
Speaker 1: Bush and you know, like, like we said, Gore was
4:31
Speaker 1: trying to to get away from that Clinton stink such
4:36
Speaker 1: that he didn't even get Bill on the Canpayne trail
4:39
Speaker 1: with him that much. And it was also I mean,
4:43
Speaker 1: this was a landmark election in a lot of ways,
4:45
Speaker 1: but it was also sort of the first, the first
4:49
Speaker 1: big election where you had someone saying, hey, Gore is
4:55
Speaker 1: the big Washington insider and I'm just this guy from Texas.
4:59
Speaker 1: Like sort of rural versus urban power struggle.
5:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where it generally began. The Bush campaign really
5:06
Speaker 2: was doing what they could to kind of highlight that
5:11
Speaker 2: dividing line.
5:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, so at the time Bush had been pretty far
5:17
Speaker 1: ahead in the polls. In the summer after the Democratic
5:21
Speaker 1: National Convention, Gore mounted a big comeback and by fall.
5:26
Speaker 1: By September, a couple of months before the election, these
5:29
Speaker 1: guys were basically deadlocked, and everybody was saying, this is
5:33
Speaker 1: going to be a really, really really close election.
5:36
Speaker 3: Hold onto your hat.
5:37
Speaker 2: Everybody knew that it would be close, but no one
5:39
Speaker 2: had any guess that it was it would turn out
5:42
Speaker 2: as close as it actually did. But just the polling,
5:45
Speaker 2: poll after poll after poll showed like Gores in the lead, Nope,
5:49
Speaker 2: Bushes in the league, Gores in the lead. Gallup found
5:52
Speaker 2: that the lead changed nine times just in the fall
5:56
Speaker 2: the fall, nine time exactly. And so election Day Tuesday,
6:01
Speaker 2: November seventh, a lot of people, including Tim Russert rest
6:05
Speaker 2: in Peace, had said, I think Florida is going to
6:09
Speaker 2: be the going to decide the outcome of this. I
6:13
Speaker 2: didn't see exactly why. I don't know if it was
6:15
Speaker 2: a gut feeling or what the deal was, but there
6:17
Speaker 2: were there were a few people who were already pointing
6:19
Speaker 2: to Florida. And at the time the news organizations NBC, ABC, CBS, FOXY, INN,
6:28
Speaker 2: and AP all subscribed to a company called the Voter
6:32
Speaker 2: News Service, which had been set up in nineteen ninety
6:34
Speaker 2: I think by the big networks to basically pool their
6:39
Speaker 2: resources to pay for people who did exit polling, and
6:43
Speaker 2: they would give that data directly to the networks, who
6:47
Speaker 2: would then use it to kind of like you know,
6:50
Speaker 2: read the tea leaves as best they could to forecast
6:53
Speaker 2: who won. Because in nineteen eighty NBC called Reagan at
6:58
Speaker 2: eight fifteen pm and set off this huge competition among
7:01
Speaker 2: the networks.
7:02
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like call for calling the election was a big,
7:05
Speaker 1: big deal for a network, And so you found that
7:08
Speaker 1: great article where they were like, you know, after that
7:10
Speaker 1: Reagan thing, all the networks started spending a lot of
7:13
Speaker 1: money in the next cycle, you know, on their own
7:16
Speaker 1: exit polling data, and it was like millions and millions
7:20
Speaker 1: of dollars. So when they got together basically and said, hey,
7:22
Speaker 1: why don't we all just hire this one service so
7:25
Speaker 1: we can all save a lot of money. The downside
7:28
Speaker 1: of that was they were all getting the same information,
7:31
Speaker 1: whether it was good or bad, and in this case
7:34
Speaker 1: it turned out the information was not great.
7:36
Speaker 2: So Gore was doing pretty good, not just in the
7:40
Speaker 2: national vote but electorally too. We got Pennsylvania, got Michigan,
7:45
Speaker 2: and Florida was starting to come in, and apparently the
7:51
Speaker 2: numbers were up. The exit polling data for Gore was
7:56
Speaker 2: showing that he probably won Florida enough that NBC said, oh,
8:01
Speaker 2: we're doing it again, And at seven forty nine pm
8:04
Speaker 2: on election Day, NBC called Florida for Gore. They didn't
8:08
Speaker 2: go so far as to call the presidency for Gore,
8:11
Speaker 2: but the writing was on the wall. If Gore won Florida,
8:14
Speaker 2: that was that. And I guess about fifteen minutes later
8:18
Speaker 2: the rest of the news organizations had joined and said
8:21
Speaker 2: the same.
8:22
Speaker 1: Thing, right, so everyone's calling Florida for Gore publicly. At
8:27
Speaker 1: this point that night, the VNS, that voter News service
8:30
Speaker 1: that was doing the exit polling for everybody, said, hey,
8:36
Speaker 1: news organizations, we've got some issues here with our data. Like,
8:42
Speaker 1: for example, in this one county in Florida, it was
8:45
Speaker 1: supposed to be four thy three hundred and two votes
8:47
Speaker 1: that we saw someone added a zero to that and
8:50
Speaker 1: it was forty three twenty votes. So maybe you should
8:54
Speaker 1: sort of hold off on calling this thing. And all
8:58
Speaker 1: the news organizations said, well, that's too late, We've already
9:02
Speaker 1: done that. And at just before ten pm, at nine
9:05
Speaker 1: to fifty five, CNN was the first to come on
9:08
Speaker 1: and say, hey, wait a minute, we jump the gun here.
9:12
Speaker 1: Everyone else of course followed suit, and then at two
9:16
Speaker 1: fifteen in the morning, Fox News comes on and says
9:20
Speaker 1: Bush is going to be the winner, not just to Florida,
9:23
Speaker 1: but the whole thing, and then everyone else followed suit
9:26
Speaker 1: and said and of course this is overnight, so you
9:29
Speaker 1: wake up in the morning thinking that George Bush had won.
9:33
Speaker 3: Right, so well not quite.
9:36
Speaker 1: Actually, well, if you were saying this, we'll see what
9:38
Speaker 1: happened between then and sunrise.
9:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think a lot of people were staying
9:41
Speaker 2: up glued to the TV still at this point. By
9:43
Speaker 2: the time Fox said that Bush was the winner, and
9:47
Speaker 2: the rest of the networks joined in with that. So
9:52
Speaker 2: that's three three times now that they have have made
9:55
Speaker 2: the projection. Because retracting a projection is a projection in
9:59
Speaker 2: and of it. It's like Rush said, even if you
10:02
Speaker 2: choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
10:04
Speaker 2: It's essentially the same thing. Yeah, and there's a quote
10:07
Speaker 2: from Donna Brazil the disgraced Democratic operative who was running
10:12
Speaker 2: Gore's campaign at the time. Get this. She texted Gore
10:16
Speaker 2: on his BlackBerry and I read the New York Times
10:19
Speaker 2: article about this. They felt compelled to explain that a
10:21
Speaker 2: BlackBerry was an instant messaging pager. That's how two thousand
10:26
Speaker 2: this thing was.
10:27
Speaker 3: By the way, really quick.
10:28
Speaker 1: I saw that movie, the BlackBerry Movie, on a plane
10:31
Speaker 1: flight recently, and it's actually very good.
10:33
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure most I recommend it pretty good.
10:36
Speaker 3: Now it's a movie movie.
10:38
Speaker 2: Most movies are pretty.
10:39
Speaker 3: Good anyway, recommended.
10:41
Speaker 2: So she told she's running the campaign and told Gore like,
10:45
Speaker 2: don't give up yet. This is it's too weird. Essentially
10:50
Speaker 2: I'm paraphrasing here, yeah, which is true. But despite that,
10:53
Speaker 2: Gore was like, I don't I think we lost, And
10:56
Speaker 2: so he even went to the extent of waking as
10:59
Speaker 2: his wife, Tipper, who was not actually sleeping, she was
11:04
Speaker 2: under the blankets with a flashlight making a list of
11:06
Speaker 2: bands that she didn't like and their kids, and said, hey,
11:10
Speaker 2: I lost, essentially, and they kids started crying. So he
11:14
Speaker 2: started to get ready to do his concession speech. That's
11:17
Speaker 2: how close this came. He also called Bush called George
11:20
Speaker 2: Bush and said, hey, congratulations. You know you're the winner, obviously,
11:25
Speaker 2: And he got into a limo to go give a
11:28
Speaker 2: concession speech in Nashville to his supporters, and on the way,
11:34
Speaker 2: one of his operatives said, hey, I've been watching the
11:38
Speaker 2: Secretary of State site in Florida. And Bush's lead went
11:41
Speaker 2: from fifty thousand to six thousand. I don't think we
11:43
Speaker 2: should concede yet. And literally this happened in the caravan
11:48
Speaker 2: on the way for him to give his concession speech
11:50
Speaker 2: at like three point thirty in the morning.
11:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so because there were still some precincts that
11:55
Speaker 1: had been unreported, so they were like.
11:57
Speaker 3: Slow your role, Gore.
11:59
Speaker 1: So Gore call up Bush again, could not have been
12:02
Speaker 1: a fun phone call, told them what was going on.
12:05
Speaker 1: Apparently there are people that heard these calls and said
12:08
Speaker 1: Bush said, uh, you know, are you really gonna withdraw
12:12
Speaker 1: your concession? And Gore responded, quote, well, you don't have
12:16
Speaker 1: to be sniffy about it. So Bush said, well, my
12:21
Speaker 1: brother's governor Florida, and he said that he said I won.
12:25
Speaker 1: And Gore said, well, let me explain something. Your younger
12:28
Speaker 1: brother's not the ultimate authority on.
12:30
Speaker 2: This that I think the al Gore finally came around
12:33
Speaker 2: at the end. But George Bush, he sounded like a
12:36
Speaker 2: cross between Yosemite Sam and a member of Leonard Skinnard.
12:40
Speaker 2: That's about right, actually, now that you mentioned it, that's
12:43
Speaker 2: like dead on.
12:45
Speaker 3: Yeah.
12:45
Speaker 1: So it was, I mean between them interpersonally, it got
12:48
Speaker 1: a little sticky right at the beginning.
12:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think George Bush even said you can't you
12:54
Speaker 2: can't retract. You're not allowed to do that. Essentially, daddy
12:57
Speaker 2: can he do that? So, yeah, that it was a
13:00
Speaker 2: really big deal. I don't think that this had actually
13:03
Speaker 2: happened before.
13:05
Speaker 1: Not as far as I know. I think this was
13:06
Speaker 1: sort of the first thing.
13:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, there were a lot of first things in this election.
13:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, so by four o'clock the networks all retract their
13:14
Speaker 1: calls and basically this is what you know, Younger Chuck
13:18
Speaker 1: wakes up to in West Texas, which is we don't
13:21
Speaker 1: know who won. Tom Brokaw gets on NBC and says, quote,
13:26
Speaker 1: we don't just have egg on our face. Oh wait,
13:29
Speaker 1: that was al Gore. Light I'm getting all confused now.
13:33
Speaker 2: I heard a little broke on there.
13:35
Speaker 1: I used to do Brokall, we don't just have an
13:37
Speaker 1: egg on our face. We've gone humlet all over our
13:40
Speaker 1: suits at this point and our faces and everywhere else.
13:44
Speaker 2: That was great. That was a great brocall.
13:46
Speaker 3: And he always sounded like he was out of breath.
13:48
Speaker 2: It wasn't that he got on, Chuck, this was four am.
13:51
Speaker 2: He was still on from when he got on at
13:53
Speaker 2: seven pm.
13:54
Speaker 3: Oh this poor guy.
13:56
Speaker 2: And Tim Russer at least just on NBC alone, are
13:58
Speaker 2: like just dying here. But they've never seen anything like it.
14:02
Speaker 2: And again, like, as you said, this is a big
14:06
Speaker 2: deal in that it was really embarrassing. It was a
14:09
Speaker 2: really big thing to call to be the network that
14:12
Speaker 2: called the presidency, so it was equally humiliating to be
14:16
Speaker 2: the network that had to retract it. And that happened
14:18
Speaker 2: to all the networks. But that also had a really
14:22
Speaker 2: big impact on public opinion. At first, they were like, well,
14:27
Speaker 2: Gore won, so that means that if you guys called
14:31
Speaker 2: this at before eight pm Eastern, there were still polls
14:35
Speaker 2: opened in the West Coast, And how many Bush voters
14:38
Speaker 2: did you discourage from turning out because you'd said Gore
14:40
Speaker 2: already won. And then the opposite of it was that
14:44
Speaker 2: when they said Bush won but then retracted it, people
14:47
Speaker 2: were like, no, Bush's the winner, which made it harder
14:49
Speaker 2: for Gore to get the public behind the recount that
14:53
Speaker 2: he was going. There was a lot of public opinion
14:56
Speaker 2: about this, a lot of opposition, some manufacture, some genuine
15:00
Speaker 2: as we'll see that that really makes a big deal.
15:05
Speaker 2: You think you think for a second, like, well, no,
15:07
Speaker 2: it just comes down to how many who got how
15:10
Speaker 2: many votes or who got how many electors from the
15:13
Speaker 2: electoral College. No, Like, the public opinion has a lot
15:17
Speaker 2: of sway in a situation like this, So everything that
15:22
Speaker 2: happened publicly was a really big deal.
15:26
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, Olivia who helped us out with this and.
15:29
Speaker 2: Did a bang up training, the fantastic job.
15:32
Speaker 1: It was keen to point out that there were, you know,
15:34
Speaker 1: a few states that they didn't have the full results
15:37
Speaker 1: about anyway. Oregon has very famously long had a vote
15:42
Speaker 1: by mail system, so it took a while to get
15:45
Speaker 1: all those votes in. It eventually went Gor's way. New
15:49
Speaker 1: Mexico was no one knew about New Mexico until December first.
15:54
Speaker 1: That eventually went Gor's way as well, and the Republicans
15:58
Speaker 1: were like, should we get a recount going in New
16:00
Speaker 1: Mexico and Wisconsin and Iowa. But they basically because the
16:05
Speaker 1: margins were pretty low, not enough to trigger any kind
16:07
Speaker 1: of automatic recount, but they thought about contesting those, but
16:11
Speaker 1: they would have had to win all of the states
16:13
Speaker 1: that they were thinking about contesting. And the writing was
16:16
Speaker 1: on the wall that like, hey, listen, we're not going
16:18
Speaker 1: to win all of these, so we're not going to
16:21
Speaker 1: contest any of them. We'll just it's going to come
16:23
Speaker 1: down to Florida, and we're going to put all of
16:26
Speaker 1: our eggs in that basket.
16:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, because Florida had twenty nine electoral votes and it
16:29
Speaker 2: could it would put either one of them in the
16:34
Speaker 2: White House. That's how close this race was that those
16:37
Speaker 2: twenty nine electoral votes going either way did it for them.
16:41
Speaker 2: So in Florida, if you have a margin of victory
16:47
Speaker 2: that's under point five percent the total tally of votes,
16:52
Speaker 2: then there has to be a recount, a machine recount
16:55
Speaker 2: where basically you run all the ballots through again and
17:01
Speaker 2: see what the count is. Right, that's just law. That's
17:04
Speaker 2: point five percent. This was point zero one percent difference
17:08
Speaker 2: out of six million votes casts in Florida in the
17:13
Speaker 2: two thousand general election. A few hundred votes, yeah, separated
17:19
Speaker 2: one candidate for president from another and again because whoever
17:24
Speaker 2: won Florida became president. A few hundred votes is what
17:29
Speaker 2: it came down to to determine who would become president
17:32
Speaker 2: that time.
17:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, because of how it works in the United States.
17:36
Speaker 1: If you're not from the United States, you can go
17:39
Speaker 1: back and listen to our Electoral College episode. You want
17:43
Speaker 1: to get angry, I know, because no matter how you
17:48
Speaker 1: count the votes, Al Gore won the popular vote, just
17:51
Speaker 1: as Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in America, it
17:55
Speaker 1: doesn't matter who gets the most votes because we have
17:57
Speaker 1: the EC in place.
18:00
Speaker 2: But just a quick sketch of it. Though, if anybody
18:02
Speaker 2: doesn't actually feel it, go in and listen to the
18:03
Speaker 2: episode again. Chuck's right, It's it's worth listening to. But
18:07
Speaker 2: in the United States, in a state, whoever has the
18:10
Speaker 2: most votes gets usually all of the electors that that
18:14
Speaker 2: state has to offer. And so in reality, what you're
18:17
Speaker 2: really running for as president is electors. So you want
18:21
Speaker 2: to win states, and you can strategically win some states
18:23
Speaker 2: over the others and lose the popular vote and win
18:27
Speaker 2: the Electoral College and still become president because you got
18:30
Speaker 2: more electors. Even though more Americans voted for the other person.
18:34
Speaker 2: And that's the big controversy because it's super undemocratic because
18:39
Speaker 2: the general population doesn't actually decide. Basically, strategy decides. It
18:45
Speaker 2: doesn't always wash out to be the person who won.
18:48
Speaker 3: The popular vote.
18:49
Speaker 1: Well, since we're talking George Bush, should we say strategery again?
18:55
Speaker 1: You can go back and listen to that episode and
18:57
Speaker 1: we'll touch on that a little bit at the end.
18:59
Speaker 1: But that's either here there, because we do have the
19:01
Speaker 1: EC and Florida was very very close, and there were
19:06
Speaker 1: people in the I mean, we knew it was going
19:07
Speaker 1: to be a tough fight at that point because a
19:11
Speaker 1: Jeb Bush is the governor of Florida, George's brother. The
19:15
Speaker 1: Secretary of State in Florida, Catherine Harris at the time,
19:18
Speaker 1: was co chair of the Bush campaign there. And the
19:21
Speaker 1: state attorney general was a Gore guide, Bob Butterworth, so
19:26
Speaker 1: nuts was even the head of the Gore campaign. So
19:30
Speaker 1: this thing was just fraught from the jump.
19:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, Chuck, I think with that it's a good
19:35
Speaker 2: place for a break.
19:36
Speaker 3: What do you say, All right, let's do it. We'll
19:38
Speaker 3: get right back.
19:39
Speaker 2: Okay.
20:06
Speaker 3: All right, So here we are, it's November.
20:10
Speaker 1: People don't know who the President of the United States
20:12
Speaker 1: is going to be yet things are starting to get
20:14
Speaker 1: pretty tense, and America is going to start learning some
20:19
Speaker 1: very specific terms and ins and outs. As far as
20:24
Speaker 1: to how Florida conducted their elections at the time, they
20:28
Speaker 1: used in a lot of the counties a punch card
20:31
Speaker 1: system where you had a little card puncher and you
20:35
Speaker 1: would look at the cannona's name and there was a
20:37
Speaker 1: little perforated square beside that, and you would use your
20:40
Speaker 1: little puncher to punch that thing out. The little square
20:43
Speaker 1: that gets removed is called.
20:44
Speaker 3: A chad, and.
20:47
Speaker 1: Depending on how punched out, this chad was determine whether
20:52
Speaker 1: or not your vote was counted. And there were a
20:55
Speaker 1: bunch of terms at the time that sort of had
20:58
Speaker 1: to define what this all meant. A dimpled or pregnant chad,
21:02
Speaker 1: which means you tried to punch it and it was
21:04
Speaker 1: indented but it was still fully attached. Was a dimpled
21:08
Speaker 1: or pregnant chad. You had the swinging door chad where
21:11
Speaker 1: two corners are attached, and then you had a hanging
21:16
Speaker 1: door chad, or what eventually became known as just a
21:18
Speaker 1: hanging chad where you punch all the way through except
21:21
Speaker 1: one little corner remains attached, and that's the situation that
21:27
Speaker 1: determines the leader of the free world. It's not right
21:32
Speaker 1: and weird.
21:33
Speaker 2: But that was the situation under Florida law. If you
21:37
Speaker 2: are an elections board in a county during a recount,
21:42
Speaker 2: you have to try to determine what the intent was
21:45
Speaker 2: of the voter based on the ambiguous ballot they turned in, right.
21:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is huge. Like, again, the Florida law says
21:53
Speaker 1: the intent of the voter is what matters.
21:56
Speaker 2: Right, and that the election board during a recount has
21:59
Speaker 2: to determine with the intendants. But there's no rules. There's
22:04
Speaker 2: no statewide rules. There's really no rules unless a canvas
22:09
Speaker 2: board like adopts them themselves to determine what a voter
22:15
Speaker 2: meant based on all those different types of chads.
22:17
Speaker 3: Right.
22:17
Speaker 2: So they've made this up as they went along, or.
22:20
Speaker 1: In some cases, counties already did have rules on the
22:24
Speaker 1: books as far as chads go, like Palm Beach County.
22:26
Speaker 2: Yes, Palm Beach County is a good example because Palm
22:29
Speaker 2: Beach County arguably is where the entire election flipped. Yeah,
22:35
Speaker 2: but they had a policy that they'd had for ten
22:38
Speaker 2: years since nineteen ninety that said if you have a
22:40
Speaker 2: dimple or pregnant chad, it doesn't count. It's a spoiled ballot,
22:44
Speaker 2: and that vote doesn't count. But if you have any
22:47
Speaker 2: kind of partially detached head, a swinging door, a tri corner,
22:51
Speaker 2: a hanging chad, any of those, that counts as a vote,
22:55
Speaker 2: Like the person clearly meant to vote using that. They
23:00
Speaker 2: during the recount, they just abandoned that and they tried
23:03
Speaker 2: something instead called the light test, where you would and
23:06
Speaker 2: there's pictures of people doing this, where you would hold
23:09
Speaker 2: the ballot up to a light source to see if
23:11
Speaker 2: any light shone through, and if.
23:13
Speaker 3: You get in the year two thousand, if you could.
23:15
Speaker 2: See any light, then that counted. And they realized that
23:19
Speaker 2: actually that totally went against the rules, that you could
23:22
Speaker 2: have a type of hanging chad and lights still not
23:26
Speaker 2: come through, So then that means you don't count that ballot,
23:29
Speaker 2: and they just gave that up and went back to
23:31
Speaker 2: the original rules. This was the kind of catastrophe that
23:36
Speaker 2: was going on during the recount in Florida, and everyone
23:39
Speaker 2: was reporting about every single minute of it, and the
23:43
Speaker 2: entire country is like, what is going on? And the
23:46
Speaker 2: people in Florida, who were in charge of all the recounts,
23:49
Speaker 2: are for rereaking out because if you read about these boards,
23:52
Speaker 2: they're like, they're not made for this kind of stuff.
23:55
Speaker 2: They're not. This is all totally new, and all of
23:57
Speaker 2: a sudden, the New York Times and the Washer Post
24:00
Speaker 2: as standing over their shoulder watching them and reporting on it,
24:03
Speaker 2: and they're just flipping out. So they're doing just all
24:06
Speaker 2: sorts of goofy stuff that just doesn't make any sense
24:09
Speaker 2: because there's just like deer in headlights.
24:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And these aren't huge boards like in
24:15
Speaker 1: one county it was like three people.
24:16
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that was Dade County where Miami is.
24:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is just nuts. We should talk about the
24:23
Speaker 3: butterfly ballot for right.
24:25
Speaker 2: I don't know if I can.
24:27
Speaker 1: This was the ballot in Palm Beach County. You sent
24:31
Speaker 1: me a picture of what this ballot look like. I'm
24:34
Speaker 1: a reasonably intelligent adult human and I looked at this
24:39
Speaker 1: ballot and it confused me a little bit. You should
24:43
Speaker 1: just look it up. Look up a picture of the
24:44
Speaker 1: Palm Beach County butterfly ballot Bush Gore election.
24:48
Speaker 3: But what it is.
24:49
Speaker 1: It's candidates on two sides like butterfly wings all the
24:54
Speaker 1: way down and in the center between all those are
24:57
Speaker 1: the little punch holes with But here's the thing is
25:02
Speaker 1: those if you look at the two sides, they're they're
25:06
Speaker 1: not aligned all the straightaway across. One's a little higher
25:09
Speaker 1: on the left, one's a little lower on the right.
25:12
Speaker 1: And on the left, number one position is George Bush.
25:17
Speaker 1: Right under that is Al Gore. On the right, number
25:20
Speaker 1: one position is Pat Buchanan. But the way it aligns
25:23
Speaker 1: and there are little arrows that point at the holes,
25:26
Speaker 1: but it's it's confusing, and it's very it would be
25:29
Speaker 1: very easy to think, oh no, I don't want to
25:32
Speaker 1: vote for Bush, I want to go down one and
25:35
Speaker 1: vote for Gore. But down one was actually on the
25:38
Speaker 1: other side slightly lower is Pat Buchanan. And it was
25:42
Speaker 1: just a very confusing ballot. And they found that Pat
25:45
Speaker 1: Buchanan got about four times the vote in that county
25:49
Speaker 1: than he did nationwide. And that that alone, and I'm
25:53
Speaker 1: not saying no one knows what would have happened for sure,
25:55
Speaker 1: but it was a funky looking ballot. Pat Buchanan had
25:58
Speaker 1: a very highly skewed amount of votes, and those amount
26:01
Speaker 1: of votes would have firmly given Al Gore victory.
26:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, And to make it even more confusing, the candidates
26:09
Speaker 2: were numbered. Didn't even start with one and two, It
26:11
Speaker 2: started with three, and then Buchanan was four, Gore was five,
26:15
Speaker 2: McReynolds was six, with Renald was a socialist. So there
26:19
Speaker 2: was one way that you could accidentally not vote for Bush.
26:22
Speaker 2: You would accidentally vote for Buchanan below him. There were
26:26
Speaker 2: two ways to accidentally not vote for Gore. You could
26:29
Speaker 2: accidentally vote for Buchanan above Gore or McReynolds below Gore.
26:33
Speaker 2: And like you said, Pat Buchanan is very instructive. The
26:36
Speaker 2: number of votes he got from the butterfly ballots. Even
26:39
Speaker 2: comparing other Palm Beach County voters who voted by mail
26:43
Speaker 2: absentee ballot that wasn't a butterfly ballot, his numbers were
26:48
Speaker 2: way less compared to the butterfly ballot votes. So suffice
26:53
Speaker 2: to say that a lot of people accidentally voted for
26:55
Speaker 2: Pat Buchanan who meant to vote for Al Gore or
26:58
Speaker 2: George Bush, but probably more al Gore because Palm Beach
27:02
Speaker 2: County is a strongly Democratic county in Florida, all.
27:06
Speaker 1: Right, So in Miami Dade, which I think you said
27:10
Speaker 1: was the most populous Florida county. Initially, that three that
27:14
Speaker 1: three person canvassing board said they were going to manually
27:17
Speaker 1: recount six hundred and fifty thousand ballots. They realize that's
27:21
Speaker 1: overwhelming and probably impossible because there was a looming deadline.
27:25
Speaker 1: So they said, all right, why don't we just count
27:27
Speaker 1: the ten thousand, seven hundred and fifty ballots that the
27:30
Speaker 1: computer system rejected, because those are the ones that are
27:33
Speaker 1: in question, and we feel pretty good that the other
27:35
Speaker 1: votes had been you know, counted properly because they were
27:38
Speaker 1: fully punched, no chad issues. The GOP leaders said, hey,
27:45
Speaker 1: canvassing Board, you're trying to rig this in favor of Gore,
27:49
Speaker 1: And they tried to get all the local Cuban Americans
27:52
Speaker 1: riled up and saying like, hey, this kind of stuff
27:54
Speaker 1: that happens under Castro, like you need to come down
27:57
Speaker 1: here and stage a protest like this will not stand.
28:03
Speaker 1: And what ended up happening was what was called the
28:06
Speaker 1: Brooks Brothers Riot because it was not local Cubans. It
28:11
Speaker 1: was not, in fact, in most cases local Floridians that
28:15
Speaker 1: came to protest, but it was Washington DC political operatives
28:20
Speaker 1: and insiders that came down and they gave themselves away
28:24
Speaker 1: by the clothes that they wore. That's why it was
28:26
Speaker 1: called the Brooks Brothers riot. People at the time were
28:29
Speaker 1: saying like, and they were trying to deny it, saying
28:32
Speaker 1: they were like local Floridians, and they're like, well, you're
28:35
Speaker 1: certainly not dressed like somebody from Miami. You've got a
28:37
Speaker 1: Brooks Brother's suit code on, sport code on, in fact,
28:41
Speaker 1: most of you do. And they went down there and
28:44
Speaker 1: they were successful. They gathered in the plaza, they screamed
28:48
Speaker 1: voter fraud. They were banging on windows and handing out
28:52
Speaker 1: crying towels and saying you're a sore loser. And it worked.
28:56
Speaker 1: They succumbed to the pressure and stopped the recount.
28:59
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, by the way, Ted Cruz was one of
29:01
Speaker 2: those operatives. He was in the who was in the riot?
29:04
Speaker 2: This state is essentially fake riot. Although if you read
29:07
Speaker 2: an interview there's a i think a Washington Post interview
29:09
Speaker 2: with Brad Blakeman, who is the guy who was responsible
29:13
Speaker 2: for staging this protest and organizing it, that he sounds
29:18
Speaker 2: like he genuinely believed that this canvassing board was trying
29:22
Speaker 2: to throw the election to Gore, and that that really
29:26
Speaker 2: fueled a lot of it. So it's difficult in that
29:28
Speaker 2: respect to fault him and his group for for protesting
29:34
Speaker 2: like that. On the other hand, it's very clear that
29:38
Speaker 2: this Brooks brother Brother's riot, they were accused of violence
29:41
Speaker 2: against election officials. They were at the very least very
29:47
Speaker 2: hostile and in your face. Again, these canvassing boards are
29:50
Speaker 2: not not cut out for this kind of life. They
29:52
Speaker 2: didn't know what the heck they were signing up for,
29:55
Speaker 2: and the Brooks Brothers rioters essentially intimidated them out of
30:00
Speaker 2: this very democratic process of recounting by hand ballots that
30:04
Speaker 2: had been rejected by the computer. There was no evidence
30:07
Speaker 2: whatsoever that the computer was selectively rejecting Gore ballots in
30:13
Speaker 2: order for him to come in and clinch the presidency
30:17
Speaker 2: in a very dramatic win in Miami Dade. It doesn't
30:20
Speaker 2: make any sense that would have favored Gore. What they
30:24
Speaker 2: were doing was trying to stop the recount in because
30:27
Speaker 2: Bus ahead, because Bush was ahead. That was the entire point.
30:31
Speaker 2: On November ninth, the Secretary of State, Catherine Harris was
30:36
Speaker 2: trying to certify the election because Bush had three hundred
30:41
Speaker 2: and twenty seven more votes than Gore. And so what
30:44
Speaker 2: these Republican operatives were doing in the Brooks Brothers right,
30:47
Speaker 2: was trying to stop the count right there, to keep
30:51
Speaker 2: George Bush's lead. That was their goal. So it seems
30:55
Speaker 2: like Blakeman's view that what they were doing was illegal
30:58
Speaker 2: may or may not be disingenuous.
30:59
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, right, Yeah, So these recounts are happening,
31:04
Speaker 1: and the Secretary of State Harris, like you said, all
31:07
Speaker 1: of a sudden, the Florida State Supreme Court got involved
31:11
Speaker 1: and she wanted to certify, like you said on the fourteenth,
31:13
Speaker 1: but the Supreme Court said, no, you have to count
31:18
Speaker 1: all the votes. You can't certify the election. You need
31:21
Speaker 1: to count them all. You can't just throw out the
31:24
Speaker 1: votes that are in dispute. So there are four counties
31:27
Speaker 1: that you need to do a hand recount on. And
31:29
Speaker 1: over the next month, between November and December, there were
31:34
Speaker 1: more than fifty lawsuits being filed by all sides. Everyone
31:39
Speaker 1: all over the place is filing lawsuits about recounting and
31:42
Speaker 1: counting and deadlines and different various counties across Florida, and
31:47
Speaker 1: eventually on December eighth, the Florida Supreme Court came out
31:50
Speaker 1: and this is very important, and ruled four to three
31:54
Speaker 1: that you have to count what's called the under votes,
31:57
Speaker 1: meaning these votes that are unclear that the Bush campaign
32:02
Speaker 1: wanted to just throw out. You got to count all
32:05
Speaker 1: these votes, and if you haven't done that yet in
32:07
Speaker 1: these counties, you got to do it. The Bush campaign said, well,
32:13
Speaker 1: we don't want to count all the votes because we're ahead.
32:16
Speaker 1: The Gore campaign said, well, great, count all of the votes.
32:19
Speaker 1: That's a democracy at work. And so the Supreme Court
32:24
Speaker 1: of the United States gets involved, and all of a sudden,
32:27
Speaker 1: on December eleventh, you are getting oral arguments on the
32:31
Speaker 1: Supreme Court of the United States about how like basically
32:36
Speaker 1: a lot of things, chiefly one of which is should
32:40
Speaker 1: the federal government get involved when states are supposed to
32:44
Speaker 1: run their own elections.
32:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, I say, we take a little break and just
32:48
Speaker 2: prepare ourselves for the catastrophe that is Bush v.
32:52
Speaker 1: Gore.
32:52
Speaker 2: What do you say, let's do it so Chuck like
33:22
Speaker 2: you said, The Florida Supreme Court said, no, you need
33:24
Speaker 2: to handcount all of those ballots that the computers rejected
33:28
Speaker 2: to figure out who who won. And the Bush campaign
33:33
Speaker 2: sued to get that stopped and got it picked up
33:36
Speaker 2: by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court on December ninth,
33:41
Speaker 2: issue to stay very strange. That is very unusual for
33:46
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court to get involved in a state court ruling.
33:50
Speaker 2: Federalism basically said, you don't do that.
33:52
Speaker 3: Stop.
33:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, state was stop the handcount, don't do that anymore.
33:58
Speaker 2: And then, even more unusual, without the Bush campaign petitioning
34:02
Speaker 2: for the Supreme Court to hear the case, the Supreme
34:04
Speaker 2: Court agreed to hear the case, and what they did
34:08
Speaker 2: was take this up.
34:10
Speaker 3: It sounds confusing, yeah, but yeah.
34:12
Speaker 2: No one in the Bush camp asked the Supreme Court
34:14
Speaker 2: to decide on the merits of the case. And yet
34:17
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court decided to decide on the merits of
34:20
Speaker 2: the case. And again, this is highly unusual. A state
34:22
Speaker 2: supreme court ruling for a state matter is pretty much
34:28
Speaker 2: sacricanct in Supreme Court, like US Supreme Court tradition, Supreme
34:33
Speaker 2: Court does not get involved in that kind of stuff.
34:35
Speaker 2: And they said, hey, let's get involved in this, this
34:38
Speaker 2: hornet's nest right now.
34:40
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly.
34:41
Speaker 1: So what we ended up with were a couple of
34:44
Speaker 1: rulings there was a seven to two ruling that it
34:49
Speaker 1: violated the equal Protection clause of the fourteenth Amendment, because
34:53
Speaker 1: the argument from the Bush side was, hey, listen, there
34:57
Speaker 1: isn't a codified statewide way that everyone has agreed to
35:02
Speaker 1: do these recounts, and so that violates the equal protection clause.
35:07
Speaker 1: And on the Gore side, he was saying, well, there
35:10
Speaker 1: is a codified way, maybe not in the way they
35:12
Speaker 1: do it, but the law is intent to vote and
35:15
Speaker 1: that's on the books.
35:17
Speaker 3: So that's how we should decide, right.
35:19
Speaker 2: And so the idea of applying the equal protection clause
35:22
Speaker 2: doesn't really make sense because in America every state has
35:27
Speaker 2: different ways of voting, not just among the states but
35:29
Speaker 2: among the counties. In an individual state, it's all over
35:33
Speaker 2: the place, Like it's up to the county to decide
35:35
Speaker 2: what kind of voting machines they want to use, how
35:38
Speaker 2: many to have, Like it's up to generally the county,
35:41
Speaker 2: if not the state. Right, So that's a really weird
35:44
Speaker 2: thing to say, no, this particular state is violating the
35:47
Speaker 2: equal protection clause. So we're going to say stop doing
35:51
Speaker 2: this handcount We're going to rule in favor of that
35:53
Speaker 2: because of the equal Protection clause, and then secondly, the
35:56
Speaker 2: other thing about the equal protection clause, Chuck, is what
35:58
Speaker 2: they were saying was everyone is not going to have
36:02
Speaker 2: their vote counted because it's because of the inequity and
36:06
Speaker 2: how you vote. So what we're gonna do is just
36:08
Speaker 2: make sure we don't count some people's votes to protect
36:13
Speaker 2: them and keep them equal. Doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
36:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, And on that first point, I believe it was
36:20
Speaker 1: either Briar or Suitor in the dissent said kind of
36:24
Speaker 1: pointed out what you were saying. Was saying like, well, hey,
36:27
Speaker 1: if that means that no state has a fair election, right,
36:31
Speaker 1: because every single state and every single county, like you said,
36:34
Speaker 1: has different like Josh Clark will one day say, he said,
36:37
Speaker 1: has different ways of doing things. So if you say
36:39
Speaker 1: that about this, then no state has a free election
36:44
Speaker 1: or a fair election or whatever. Everything is called into
36:46
Speaker 1: question and that can't be the case. The other concurring
36:51
Speaker 1: decision was even more important, and I think we said
36:53
Speaker 1: it was seven to two because Briar and Suitor actually,
36:57
Speaker 1: as quote unquote liberal justices sided with the quote unquote
37:00
Speaker 1: conservative side.
37:01
Speaker 2: Which is so weird because it's such a bad legal argument.
37:04
Speaker 1: I know, I don't know. Well, it's interesting. Maybe it
37:07
Speaker 1: wasn't Suitor or Brier then that said what I said.
37:10
Speaker 2: It was probably John Paul Stevens.
37:12
Speaker 1: Oh, I think it was Stevens. But the concurring and
37:15
Speaker 1: this is really the most important decision, which was a
37:18
Speaker 1: five to four ruling on you know, I know they're
37:22
Speaker 1: supposed to be impartial, but there were five conservative justices
37:25
Speaker 1: at the time for liberal justices, and it ended up
37:28
Speaker 1: a five to four concurrent ruling that not only can
37:32
Speaker 1: you not do the recount, but like, there's no time
37:35
Speaker 1: and because of what's called safe harbor, which is this
37:39
Speaker 1: date a deadline for states to resolve issues over the
37:43
Speaker 1: selection of their state electors, and that was approaching, whereas
37:47
Speaker 1: the liberal justices said, well, hold on, that doesn't mean
37:51
Speaker 1: that's not when they cast their vote at the Electoral College.
37:54
Speaker 1: There's still six days after that. There's plenty A there's
37:58
Speaker 1: plenty of time to do that. And B had you
38:01
Speaker 1: not issued a state to begin with, they would be
38:04
Speaker 1: done by now probably and we wouldn't have even been
38:07
Speaker 1: called on. So we ended up causing a problem with
38:09
Speaker 1: this stay that we are now ruling that we're now
38:13
Speaker 1: ruling on by instituting that stay.
38:15
Speaker 2: They caused the problem. It's really just perfectly put. They
38:19
Speaker 2: caused the problem that they were saying was the problem,
38:21
Speaker 2: and the reason that they were saying, you have to
38:24
Speaker 2: stop the recount. It's too late. Isn't that nuts?
38:27
Speaker 3: Yeah?
38:27
Speaker 1: RBG and her very famously in her descent, usually say
38:31
Speaker 1: I respectfully descent, and she just said I dissent, which
38:35
Speaker 1: was doesn't sound like a big deal, but those words matter,
38:38
Speaker 1: and it was a big deal. And she was also
38:41
Speaker 1: like saying, hey, wait a minute, this contradicts all of
38:43
Speaker 1: our federalist principles that this is a state matter and.
38:47
Speaker 3: That we shouldn't get involved with this to begin with.
38:49
Speaker 3: So it was.
38:50
Speaker 1: A not only a landmark ruling, but one that was
38:54
Speaker 1: just fraught with upset on all sides, up and down
38:59
Speaker 1: the political spectrm into the citizens of the United States.
39:02
Speaker 2: Even more suspiciously. There's a really great article from the
39:06
Speaker 2: Nevada Law Journal from twenty twelve written by Marcus Broden,
39:13
Speaker 2: and he points out there was a lot of books
39:17
Speaker 2: written about this afterward, and he said that at least
39:20
Speaker 2: three of the conservative justices had like personal what was
39:25
Speaker 2: it called when you're supposed to accuse yourself. I guess
39:28
Speaker 2: conflicts of.
39:28
Speaker 3: Interest, Yeah, yeah.
39:29
Speaker 2: One was that Scalia's Sons law firm was arguing the
39:35
Speaker 2: case in front of the Supreme Court for the Bush side.
39:39
Speaker 2: Another was that Clarence Thomas's wife, Ginny was looking for
39:44
Speaker 2: it was like accepting resumes on behalf of the Heritage
39:47
Speaker 2: Foundation to set up a Bush administration. And then thirdly,
39:52
Speaker 2: I think Sandrade.
39:53
Speaker 3: O'Connor, Yeah, she was trying to retire.
39:55
Speaker 2: I think, yes, she wanted to retire, so she didn't
39:57
Speaker 2: want Gore to win because she didn't want to have
39:59
Speaker 2: to stay on for four more years so that a
40:01
Speaker 2: Democrat wouldn't pick her replacement. So these three had like actual,
40:05
Speaker 2: like personal vested interests in the outcome of this election.
40:09
Speaker 2: Three of the five did, at least, and even putting
40:12
Speaker 2: that aside, the fact that the Supreme Court got involved
40:15
Speaker 2: in the first place was a terrible idea. The fact
40:20
Speaker 2: that they decided the election was a terrible idea. The
40:24
Speaker 2: legal idea that they ruled on was terrible. And then
40:27
Speaker 2: the idea that anybody had even an iota of personal
40:30
Speaker 2: interest in the outcome was a really big deal. And
40:33
Speaker 2: today the Supreme Court is definitely under question as far
40:37
Speaker 2: as political activism's concerned, and I'm sure it has been
40:41
Speaker 2: for a while, but it really feels like common knowledge
40:44
Speaker 2: these days. Yeah, in two thousand, that was really new.
40:48
Speaker 2: That was a really big deal. People thought very very
40:51
Speaker 2: differently about the Supreme Court in two thousand compared to
40:54
Speaker 2: how they think about them today.
40:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, and on those a couple of things you mentioned
40:59
Speaker 1: Scale Son, who was part of the law firm that
41:01
Speaker 1: argued the Bush case. He very soon after the election
41:06
Speaker 1: was given a cabinet position, right right, And Sandrad O'Connor,
41:10
Speaker 1: this isn't just speculation that she wanted to retire, Like,
41:13
Speaker 1: wasn't she It was either on tape or like people
41:17
Speaker 1: that were with her when they called it initially for
41:19
Speaker 1: Gore like said she was like, all crap, basically, yeah,
41:23
Speaker 1: like this means I got to work another four years.
41:26
Speaker 2: She said, this was this is this is terrible. And
41:29
Speaker 2: her husband explained that they had been planning on retiring
41:32
Speaker 2: but now she couldn't if Gore won.
41:34
Speaker 1: All right, So just want to clear up that wasn't
41:36
Speaker 1: just like, you know, some opinion that we're living out there.
41:39
Speaker 2: Right, and then sorry, there's one more legal thing that
41:41
Speaker 2: Gore camp really dropped the ball because legally, the Bush
41:47
Speaker 2: campaign had no legal standing in this matter. They weren't
41:51
Speaker 2: the injured party. The injured party was the potentially disenfranchised
41:54
Speaker 2: voters of Florida, not the Bush campaign. So the Bush
41:57
Speaker 2: campaign had no standing to bring this case to the
42:00
Speaker 2: Supreme Court in the first place. And the Gore team
42:03
Speaker 2: didn't even mention it. And that might have been the
42:05
Speaker 2: thing that put enough public pressure on the Supreme Court
42:08
Speaker 2: to just toss it and say, no, whatever the Florida
42:11
Speaker 2: Supreme Court said stays, and they just dropped the ball
42:14
Speaker 2: that hard.
42:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this isn't a surmising because we're not smart
42:18
Speaker 1: enough legally speaking, Like multitudes of legal scholars have come
42:22
Speaker 1: out and said, like, why didn't they argue standing like
42:25
Speaker 1: that was what would have changed the outcome.
42:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crazy how many just small things would have
42:30
Speaker 2: changed the outcome. Let's talk about that.
42:33
Speaker 1: Sure, So Libya appropriately caused this autopsy report because after
42:38
Speaker 1: something like this, they don't just go all right, well,
42:40
Speaker 1: that went as it should go, and everything was super smooth.
42:43
Speaker 1: I mean, regardless of who won or lost, if it
42:45
Speaker 1: would have been Gore, it would have been the same thing.
42:47
Speaker 1: It would have been like, boy, what a mess, right,
42:49
Speaker 1: This is not how elections are supposed to be decided
42:52
Speaker 1: in the United States. So afterward there were all kinds
42:55
Speaker 1: of studies, all kinds of people writing legal papers and
42:59
Speaker 1: just studying the data. The University of Chicago's National Opinion
43:04
Speaker 1: Research Center, which is an independent organization, they did a
43:07
Speaker 1: review and they said, what we found out was that
43:11
Speaker 1: more Florida voters attempted to vote for Gore, but enough
43:16
Speaker 1: of them, like you know, mark their ballots inappropriately, and
43:21
Speaker 1: that not only that, but like each side would tried
43:26
Speaker 1: to do things that would have hurt their own camp
43:29
Speaker 1: Like I believe it was. Gore was trying to get
43:33
Speaker 1: these four counties hand recounted that actually would have ended
43:36
Speaker 1: up helping Bush. And at one point Bush was trying
43:39
Speaker 1: to make the detached at two Corners vote count that
43:45
Speaker 1: would have helped Gore. So it was just a big
43:48
Speaker 1: play to spaghetti as far as you know, the time,
43:51
Speaker 1: because they were all just sort of very quickly in
43:55
Speaker 1: real time, reacting to things that they never thought they
43:59
Speaker 1: would have to react to, and sometimes doing things that
44:01
Speaker 1: would have even hurt their chances at winning.
44:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, And another study found that just in Palm Beach
44:06
Speaker 2: County alone, the over votes people who voted for more
44:09
Speaker 2: than one person where there were just two. The ones
44:13
Speaker 2: that went to that included Pat Buchanan. They decided about
44:17
Speaker 2: seventy five percent of those were because of ballot design.
44:21
Speaker 2: And I think two thousand votes would have gone to
44:24
Speaker 2: al Gore, which would have flipped the entire state because
44:27
Speaker 2: George Bush won Florida by five hundred and thirty seven votes. Right,
44:31
Speaker 2: So it's not one hundred percent clear what would have happened,
44:36
Speaker 2: because even if that recount would have gone on, other
44:39
Speaker 2: studies have shown like no, actually Bush might have still
44:43
Speaker 2: won based on the autopsy we conducted. So it's still
44:48
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three not clear who actually won the
44:50
Speaker 2: two thousand election.
44:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you're asking yourself, like all right, Florida
44:55
Speaker 1: had a law in place about intent to vote, as
44:58
Speaker 1: like that's what matters. One way that you can measure
45:02
Speaker 1: intent is like to look at that chad and see,
45:05
Speaker 1: you know, was it clearly trying to be punched for
45:07
Speaker 1: a candidate. Another way you can do that is as
45:11
Speaker 1: a right to remedy. You can get in touch with
45:13
Speaker 1: people and say, all right, you got another chance, like
45:16
Speaker 1: it looks like you marked your ballot in an inconsistent way.
45:20
Speaker 1: Try again. And they did this in different counties in
45:23
Speaker 1: some counties in Florida, which it really helped. It led
45:26
Speaker 1: to an error rate of less than one percent. But
45:29
Speaker 1: in the only predominantly black county in the state of
45:32
Speaker 1: Florida at the time, Gadsden County, they did not allow
45:36
Speaker 1: them to remedy the ballots, and there was a twelve
45:39
Speaker 1: point four percent invalidated ballot rate compared to under one percent.
45:44
Speaker 1: So there's just hinky stuff going on all over the place.
45:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Bush Fi Gore is like a toxic zombie
45:51
Speaker 2: legal case that won't die and should have never happened
45:54
Speaker 2: in the first place. But there is a really strange
45:56
Speaker 2: appendage to that that we've talked about before, I think
46:00
Speaker 2: in our Supreme Court President Judicial Precedent's episode, Yeah, I
46:04
Speaker 2: think so, where they said that it's limited to the
46:07
Speaker 2: present circumstances. And as that Mark Boden guy wrote in
46:11
Speaker 2: the Nevada Law Review, they basically attached like a warning sign,
46:14
Speaker 2: like warning, do not use this as precedent. Essentially, Supreme
46:17
Speaker 2: courts just deciding the president here and this doesn't apply
46:21
Speaker 2: to any other ruling because it shouldn't have happened anyway
46:24
Speaker 2: in the first place, right, and yet it's still cited
46:27
Speaker 2: as precedent all over the places cited by both sides actually,
46:31
Speaker 2: even though it shouldn't be whatsoever. And that's just one
46:35
Speaker 2: of this kind of afterlife of the two thousand election
46:39
Speaker 2: that's still going on.
46:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely a lot of things have changed since then.
46:46
Speaker 1: Ralph Nader for the Green Party certainly did not win
46:49
Speaker 1: any friends on the left because he got close to
46:52
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand votes in Florida, you know, most of
46:55
Speaker 1: which probably would.
46:55
Speaker 3: Have gone to al Gore.
46:57
Speaker 1: And he ran again even though everyone was like, I
47:01
Speaker 1: love you, Nator, but stop screwing up the elections if
47:04
Speaker 1: you're a Democrat, and he was like, yeah, I don't care,
47:07
Speaker 1: you know, I believe in what I'm doing. And so
47:09
Speaker 1: he ran again in two thousand and four. You know,
47:12
Speaker 1: as far as mounting a third party bid, that it
47:15
Speaker 1: certainly put a damper on that. A lot of people
47:18
Speaker 1: say the two party system being so locked in stone
47:20
Speaker 1: is one of the big problems in this country. And
47:24
Speaker 1: another thing that happened was states immediately were like, oh boy,
47:30
Speaker 1: we can't do this again. Florida for sure, and other
47:34
Speaker 1: states were like these punch cards, like we got to
47:36
Speaker 1: get into the we got to get with the times
47:38
Speaker 1: here and have a more secure way of voting than
47:41
Speaker 1: just people punching a card like it's you know, eighteen
47:43
Speaker 1: seventy five, and you will see no more chads. All
47:47
Speaker 1: these changes sort of nationwide from state to state, culminated
47:51
Speaker 1: in the most recent twenty twenty election, where in Donald
47:55
Speaker 1: Trump's own Department of Homeland Security and Cybersecurity and Infra
48:00
Speaker 1: Structure Security Agency said was the most secure election in
48:03
Speaker 1: American history, with no evidence that any voting system deleted
48:08
Speaker 1: or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.
48:11
Speaker 1: So thankfully, so many changes were put in place to
48:15
Speaker 1: make sure something like this didn't happen again.
48:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the electoral college is kind of this weird
48:20
Speaker 2: wonky thing that happened in the background in until two
48:23
Speaker 2: thousand and it really kind of brought to the flour
48:25
Speaker 2: like what a potent and also undemocratic institution this is.
48:30
Speaker 2: And so a lot of people are like, we need
48:31
Speaker 2: to get rid of this thing. And apparently, in a
48:33
Speaker 2: twenty twenty poll by the Pew Organization, fifty eight percent
48:36
Speaker 2: of American adults said they would support a constitutional amendment
48:40
Speaker 2: that said the electoral college is nil and void.
48:44
Speaker 3: Well, you're never going to get that on a ballot.
48:46
Speaker 2: I don't know, man, I don't know. I don't understand
48:48
Speaker 2: why it's not already. It is such an enormous problem.
48:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wish there were more what do you call
48:55
Speaker 1: those referendums, Yeah, where they would just let human the
49:00
Speaker 1: or and public vote on things rather than people to
49:03
Speaker 1: decide the things.
49:04
Speaker 2: Well, that's what's been going on with abortion access. They've
49:07
Speaker 2: been they've been strategically purposefully getting them on ballots that
49:11
Speaker 2: don't have other politicians right to get people to just
49:15
Speaker 2: vote on the one issue. Yes, yeah, and it is
49:18
Speaker 2: a great idea because then you actually see what the
49:21
Speaker 2: people actually think about it. You know, it's I think
49:23
Speaker 2: that's a great idea too, Chuck.
49:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, however, way any of it goes, let people decide,
49:30
Speaker 1: because I think we've all seen that elected representatives, you know,
49:36
Speaker 1: they don't always necessarily reflect the will of their people,
49:38
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying.
49:39
Speaker 2: No, And another thing is, I mean pretty much everybody
49:42
Speaker 2: on both sides can point to Congress and be like,
49:44
Speaker 2: you guys, don't do enough these days. If voters voted
49:50
Speaker 2: on referenda, then you know, the voters could do the
49:53
Speaker 2: work that Congress is supposed to be doing passing laws.
49:56
Speaker 3: Yeah.
49:56
Speaker 1: Well, they don't want to do that because one of
49:58
Speaker 1: those first referenda would be term limits, and they're like.
50:01
Speaker 3: Oh no, let's not do that.
50:03
Speaker 2: You got anything else?
50:05
Speaker 3: Oh?
50:06
Speaker 1: Man, I got nothing else. Can't wait till next November.
50:08
Speaker 1: That's going me a lot of fun.
50:10
Speaker 2: I don't know if I can do it. Chuck, Well,
50:14
Speaker 2: since Chuck has laughed at my pain, I think everybody
50:16
Speaker 2: it's time for listener, ma'am.
50:20
Speaker 1: Oh, this one's a great one. This is from Dan
50:24
Speaker 1: Sheaflin and Dan Well, I'm just gonna read it. It's
50:28
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. I hope you saw this one. If not,
50:30
Speaker 1: you should go look it up. Okay, hey, guys, as
50:33
Speaker 1: I write you, I'm ensconced in the warm cab of
50:35
Speaker 1: a Caterpillar tractor, jostling along the snow covered Ross ice
50:40
Speaker 1: shelf on my way to the Eminson Scott South Pole station.
50:44
Speaker 2: I did not see this.
50:46
Speaker 3: This is cool.
50:46
Speaker 1: He included a picture of this caravan five days ago
50:49
Speaker 1: when we left McMurdo station on Ross Island the starting
50:53
Speaker 1: point in the South Pole traverse. We were one thousand
50:56
Speaker 1: and thirty eight miles from the South Pole. My current
50:59
Speaker 1: ground speed is seven point one miles per hour, which
51:02
Speaker 1: is a pretty good pace. Our speed can be much
51:05
Speaker 1: slower at times, depending on snow and a variety of
51:07
Speaker 1: other conditions. There are fourteen of us who embarked on
51:10
Speaker 1: this twenty five to thirty day journey, each in our
51:13
Speaker 1: own tractor. Are hauling mostly fuel to resupply the South
51:16
Speaker 1: Pole station, but also cargo and the living modules where
51:21
Speaker 1: we eat and sleep and use the bathroom. Our toilet
51:25
Speaker 1: is called the in Sinnolette and you guessed it. It's
51:30
Speaker 1: a turd burning rig, fairy glamorous. So they're in these
51:34
Speaker 1: tractors just slow rolling it to the South Pole.
51:37
Speaker 3: That's a make deliver supplies and fuel.
51:39
Speaker 2: That's really amazing stuff.
51:41
Speaker 1: He had a picture of this caravan is so cool
51:44
Speaker 1: as you can imagine. I have a lot of time
51:45
Speaker 1: sitting in this tractor, and quite a bit of that
51:47
Speaker 1: time as dedicated to listening to podcast yours included. I've
51:50
Speaker 1: been a faithful listener since twenty ten. We have a
51:52
Speaker 1: whiteboard inside our galley and a post I post daily
51:56
Speaker 1: a podcast recommendation and today I put up naked mole Rat.
52:00
Speaker 1: It's a face only a mother could love, because that
52:02
Speaker 1: one blew my mind. Guys, how can they be so interesting?
52:06
Speaker 1: And that's from Dan Shifflin, and he says big shout
52:08
Speaker 1: out to his wife Marcy as well as the guys
52:11
Speaker 1: on the traverse. So, man, you don't think about people
52:15
Speaker 1: out there doing these wacky jobs. But Dan and the
52:18
Speaker 1: gang out there on the on the slow train are
52:20
Speaker 1: doing it.
52:20
Speaker 2: That's really cool. Thanks a lot, Dan. Shout out to
52:22
Speaker 2: Marcy for putting up with Dan driving around the South
52:26
Speaker 2: Pole on a slow train. Yeah, and thanks for the
52:30
Speaker 2: picture too, Dan, I'm looking for I can't find it
52:32
Speaker 2: right now, so send it to me, Chuck. I will
52:35
Speaker 2: if you want to be like Dan and just blow
52:37
Speaker 2: our minds with a picture of where you are or
52:40
Speaker 2: some info about what you do. We would love that
52:43
Speaker 2: you can blow our minds by wrapping that information up
52:46
Speaker 2: into an email and sending it off to Stuff Podcasts
52:49
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
52:54
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
52:56
Speaker 3: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
53:00
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,