Introduction to four reviews of Breaking the Deadlock: The 2000 Election, the Constitution, and the Courts

On November 7, 2000, citizens of the United States of America went to the polls to elect a new President. The contest between the two main contenders for the American Presidency—George W. Bush and Albert Gore—was hard-fought. Moreover, several public opinion polls conducted shortly before November 7 suggested that the race between Bush and Gore was very close. So the results of the voting on November 7 were anxiously awaited. During the second half of the twentieth century US citizens had grown accustomed to learning the identity of their next President shortly after casting votes expressing their preferences among Presidential candidates. After the election of 1948 the outcomes of quadrennial Presidential races were often known the same day of such voting by the general public and, in any event, the identity of the winner of the Presidential race was usually reasonably certain the day following such voting. But the 2000 Presidential election did not follow the normal pattern: the outcome of the 2000 Presidential race remained unsettled for more than a month after ‘election day’.1 The phrase ‘Presidential election day’ is, strictly speaking, a misnomer when it is applied to a polling day such as November 7, 2000. Ordinary American citizens do vote in Presidential elections. But the votes of ordinary citizens do not directly elect American Presidents. The US Constitution provides that the President of the United States is to be elected—under normal circumstances—by a body commonly known as the ‘electoral college’.2 Under the American electoral college scheme each State of the United States of America is allocated a specific number of electors (according to a constitutionally prescribed formula). In the 2000 Presidential contest Florida was entitled to choose 25 such Presidential electors. The total number of electors slated to be chosen by all of the various States for the 2000 Presidential election was 538. The American Constitution (it is generally believed) allows the election of a President by the electoral college only if an absolute majority of all authorized electors—i.e. a majority of 538 electors—vote in favour of a single presidential candidate.3 Hence, in the 2000 Presidential election the votes of 270 members of the electoral college were required to put a Presidential candidate ‘over the top’.