How third parties messed up the 2000 Flori-duh election
In our Anecdotal Evidence column, movers and shakers share personal stories of how intriguing (and often odd) campaigning in their respective swing state can be.
Aubrey Jewett 鈥 Political Scientist, University of Central Florida
Aubrey Jewett with a voting punchcard ballot from the 2000 presidential election. Photo: Lars Gesing/CU News Corps
鈥淔lorida changed it鈥檚 constitution in 1998 in an attempt to be more fair to minor political parties. Our voters approved a proposal to make ballot access equal for all parties. Before that, minor parties had to jump through a lot more hoops, and it tended to keep them off the ballot. But when we leveled the playing field, one of the unforeseen consequences was that we had on the general election ballot in Florida that year, including the Green Party with Ralph Nader and the Reform Party, which Pat Buchanan ran for.
鈥淥ur election supervisors in each of Florida鈥檚 67 counties had to figure out how to list the candidates on the ballot. They came up with several innovative ways to do that. Most of our big, urban counties had a punch-card system, which was considered to be high-tech when it was adopted in the late 60s and early 70s but by 2000 was very low tech, cumbersome and created a lot of problems.
鈥淪everal supervisors of elections across the state began to list the candidates for president on one page and continued on the next page. was running for re-election to Congress that year. She ran ads, 鈥榁ote for Gore, vote for Brown,鈥 tying the Democratic ticket together. Well, wouldn鈥檛 you know鈥 Al Gore was listed on the first page in Duval County. But when you turned the page, there was another candidate running for president whose last name was Browne (Libertarian Harry Browne). So Duval County had a very high number of invalidated ballots from over-voting, which happens when you have more than one vote for a presidential candidate on a ballot. In Duval County, they had something like 20,000 such votes, and many of them voted for Gore on the front page and for Browne (!) on the second page.
鈥淲e had another example of . That was what was known as the butterfly ballot. Standard procedure says you should list all candidates on one page, from top to bottom. But in Palm Beach, the supervisor of elections thought, 鈥業鈥檝e got a lot of seniors and they may have vision problems. If I list all 10 candidates on one side, it is going to be awfully small font.鈥 What she came up with was she alternated lines between the left and the right side. Instead they accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan.
鈥淚t all came about because of an attempt to be fair to third parties.鈥
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