“History on Hold” as Election Officials Count and Recount Votes (2000)

A week after election day, all eyes remained on Florida to decide the next American president. Florida’s initial results showed Bush the winner by just over 300 votes statewide, a close enough margin to trigger the state law mandating a required recount by machine. However, the recount process, both by machine and by hand, was a time-intensive task, for poll workers struggled to finalize and submit their results by 5:00 p.m. on November 14, seven days after election polls closed—a deadline that Florida’s Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Republican, vowed to enforce. Several lawsuits were filed in state court: Gore’s campaign and other parties asked for extending the deadline to keep counting votes, while Bush’s campaign and other parties filed suits demanding Florida uphold the deadline and stop counting. This clip features a short overview of the painstaking, time-intensive process of vote recounting and the nascent legal disputes surrounding Florida’s state election statutes in the week after the election.

The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer | NewsHour Productions (Television station : Washington, D.C..) | November 13, 2000 This video clip and associated transcript appear from 2:48 - 11:52 in the full record.