The Presidential Election of 2000 is the closet election in history. It took fiveweeks to decide who would be the next president of the United States of America. OnDecember 12, 2000, the US Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 vote to stop recounting theundervotes. The decision reversed the ruling in Florida made by Floridas Supreme Court. The Florida justices Fred Lewis, Harry Anstead, Leander Shaw, Jr., Charles T. Wells,Major Harding, Barbara Pariente, and Peggy Quince had voted 4-3 to recount all theundervotes of Floridas 67 counties. The U.S. Supreme Court overruled the FloridaSupreme Court and declared that the states ruling was unconstitutional. Underfederalism, the US Supreme Court can overrule state courts where issues of federal laware involved (Cohen 42). When the Florida Supreme Court decision violated the equalrights provision of the US Constitution.Gore and his legal team repealed to Florida Supreme Court because of JudgeSanders. A plain outspoken, sharp-witted man who uses his folksiness as a shield, Sauls,59, proved to be an important jurist in the legal feud over the presidency (Roche). JudgeN. Sanders Sauls, the Leon County judge made the decision not to count the undervotesin the election after listening to nine hours of argument and testimony. On Friday night, Gore told TIME that he was not all that surprised by the stateSupreme Court decision rescuing him from the abyss (Pooley 34). The Florida SupremeCourt had decided to recount the undervotes to make the election easier. Its decisiondelayed the election for more than a month. The election was delayed because ofundervotes being counted and then recounted. Undervotes are ballots that contain votesin some races but not all. The undervotes raised attention because the election was reallyclose between Bush and Al Gore. Before the Floridas Supreme Court ruling George W.Bush was ahead with 537 votes. After the order from the court to recount 42,000undervotes Bu...
