Source?Bush didnt win the last election, the Supreme Court in a massive overstepping of its own Jurisdiction decided to end the official counting of votes. Giving Bush the presidency. The votes where later counted and Gore won Florida by 1400 votes.
I have a source in front of me right now that says:
1 - The day after the polls closed in 2000, the Florida Division of Elections reported that Bush won the popular vote, 2,909,135 to 2,907,351.
2 - The Miami Herald, along with a consortium of the nation's major news organizations, each hired outside consultants to examine the "uncounted" ballots - those that never went a manual recount, and which were machine-rejected as "overvotes" or "undervotes" (you know, the ones that Gore WANTED to be recounted). But according to the Miami Herald, had the manual recounts continued in Gore's 4 hand-picked counties (which that he won initially by a huge margin, and theorized that there were more uncounted ballots there for him), he still lacked enough votes to overcome Bush (Bush would have won by 537 votes rather than the 1800ish given by the machine counters).
3 - The supreme court's decision was based on the fact that in the manual recount, in some counties, slightly dimpled/scratched chads were being counted as votes for Gore, whereas in other counties, only fully punctured or hanging chads were counted as votes. Nevermind that the instructions on the card clearly stated that only fully punctured cards with no hanging chads would be counted.
My source is "The Ten Things You Can't Say in America" by Larry Elder (a libertarian). It's a very slanted book, but it offers a refreshingly different viewpoint on a lot of issues. I used it as my source for the above because I knew it had info on the 2000 elections and I don't have time for mass web searches right now. Elder also cites a number of sources in his bibliography on the issue and I'd be happy to cite them for you as well.
Edit - I should mention that, with regards to your post, "the official counting of votes" would be better described as "the official recounting of votes in the 4 counties Gore specified." After all, Florida law allows either candidate to demand a manual recount, and Gore did, but only in those 4 counties.
Anyway, what's your source?
