TOM BROKAW (NBC): “…too close to call…”
DAN RATHER (CBS): “Florida is now too close to call. [I] want to say that again, it’s a confusing situation. Now, if you’re disgusted with us, frankly I don’t blame you.”
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Florida is a big southern state. It had enough electoral votes to make either candidate the winner. Election officials counted almost six million votes on Election Night. George Bush had slightly more votes than Al Gore but not enough to avoid a recount. Florida state law calls for a recount when the difference between two candidates is less than one-half of one percent of the votes.
State recounts normally involve the governor. But the governor of Florida said he would not get involved. That was because the governor was Jeb Bush, George Bush's brother.
And there were other issues with the election. Some black voters said election workers had unjustly prevented them from voting. There were also problems with voting machines and ballots. In one area, some Gore supporters believed they had voted for Pat Buchanan by mistake. The names were next to one another on the ballot. Democrats said the ballot design was illegal. Republicans said Democratic Party officials had never objected to it.
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President George W. Bush addresses the nation from the Oval Office in the White House
The disputed election results in Florida introduced a new term into popular speech. Americans began talking about "chads." Whether it was "hanging chads," "pregnant chads" or "dimpled chads," it amounted to the same problem. It meant that a voting machine had not cleanly punched out a bit of paper, called a chad, when the voter made a choice. As a result, the ballot would confuse a vote-counting machine and make the choice unreadable.
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2013-11-25
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2013-11-25