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The Florida election recount of 2000 was a period of vote re-counting that occurred following the unclear results of the 2000 US presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, specifically the Florida results. The election was ultimately settled in favor of George W. Bush when the Supreme Court, with its final ruling on Bush v. Gore, stopped the recount. ^[1]

The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, sponsored by a consortium of major U.S. news organizations, conducted a Florida Ballot Project comprehensive review of all ballots uncounted (by machine) in the Florida 2000 presidential election, both undervotes and overvotes, with the main research aim being to report how different ballot layouts correlate with voter mistakes.

The media companies involved were:

• Associated Press
• The New York Times
• The Wall Street Journal
• CNN
• St. Petersburg Times
• The Palm Beach Post
• The Washington Post
• Tribune Company
  • Los Angeles Times
  • Chicago Tribune
  • Orlando Sentinel
  • The Baltimore Sun

Although the NORC study was not primarily intended as a determination of which candidate "really won", analysis of the results, given the hand counting of machine-uncountable ballots due to various types of voter error, indicated that they would lead to differing results, reported in the newspapers which funded the recount, such as The Miami Herald (The Miami Herald Report: Democracy Held Hostage) or the Washington Post [1].

The findings were reported by the media during the week after November 12, 2001.

All of the various county-by-county recounts had been requested by Gore or Bush. Neither candidate had formally requested a total statewide recount.

The recount also showed that the only way that Al Gore could have tallied more votes was by using counting methods that were never requested, including "overvotes" — spoiled ballots containing more than one vote for an office. While some of these ballots recorded votes for two separate candidates, a significant number (20% in Lake County, for example) were cases of a voter voting for a candidate and then also writing in that same candidate's name on the write-in line. A judge supervising the recount told the Orlando Sentinel that he had been open to the idea of examining the overvotes, and had been planning to discuss the matter at a hearing when the US Supreme Court stopped the recount. According to Mickey Kaus of Slate.com (emphasis in original), "If the recount had gone forward Judge Lewis might well have counted the overvotes in which case Gore might well have won."^[2]

According to the New York Times, the Palm Beach County butterfly ballot may have cost Gore a net 6286 votes, and the Duval County 2 page ballot may have cost him a net 1999 votes, each of which would have made the difference by itself. ^[3]