Presidential Elections 2000

Harry Sawyer, election supervisor in Key West, was stunned when Florida officials sent him a list of 150 convicted felons to cut from county voter rolls in mid-1999. Among those named: an election employee, another worker's husband--and Sawyer's own father. None was a felon. "It was just a mess," Sawyer said. More mess was to come.

The Department of Justice sued the state of New York on Wednesday over its worst-in-the-nation record of complying with the Help America Vote Act, the first time federal officials have sued a state over the new voting requirements. Adopted after the disputed 2000 presidential election, the act was designed to update the nation's voting systems. Supporters of the act have identified New York as making the least progress in complying with the legislation.

When it became clear that the disputed Florida election could deliver the White House to his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush immediately recused himself from any official role in the recount, promising to avoid even the "slightest appearance of a conflict of interest." He directed his staff to spend their time on government business and pledged to do the same. Vowing that no political work would be done on the taxpayers' dime, six staffers took unpaid leaves to volunteer on the recount.

Unused butterfly ballots left over from the 2000 presidential election are not public records and can be destroyed, a state appeals court ruled in Tallahassee. A three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal unanimously denied an appeal by two voters who wanted the ballots preserved. "Nothing could be more obvious than that a ballot becomes a public record once it is voted," Chief Judge Charles J. Kahn Jr. wrote in the ruling.

The Gore dynasty includes several politicians and lawyers. The candidate's father was a lawyer and three-term senator from Tennessee. His mother became the first female graduate of Vanderbilt Law School. (Al Gore attended that school as well but dropped out in 1976 to run for Congress.) Attorney, confidant and brother-in-law Frank Hunger is the former head of the Justice Department's civil division. Daughter Karenna Gore Schiff, 27, recently graduated from Columbia Law School.

High-tech executives leapfrogged into the ranks of Orange County's most generous Democratic and Republican party campaign donors in the election just past, mirroring a national trend. Computer pioneer David W. Hanna and dot-com multimillionaire Scott Blum--both newcomers to checkbook politics--broke into a familiar field of benefactors that included developer George Argyros and Paul Goldenberg, owner of Paul's TV.

On a Texas spring day during the height of the Vietnam War, a fresh-faced young man about to graduate from Yale University walked into the office of the commander of the Texas Air National Guard. Col. Walter B. "Buck" Staudt listened to the 21-year-old, who had no military or aviation experience but seemed polite and presentable. "He said he wanted to fly just like his daddy," Staudt recalled.

More than a quarter-century after the Supreme Court established a constitutional right to abortion, overall support for the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision seems to be softening as Americans adopt a more nuanced view of the circumstances under which abortions should be allowed, according to a new Los Angeles Times Poll.

Gov. George W. Bush, taking a new direction in his evolving approach to gun control, launched a program Friday to give free trigger locks to any handgun owners in Texas who want them. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee initiated the program with little advance notice, setting aside $1 million per year in state funds for five years to purchase trigger locks that will be distributed through police stations and fire departments.

By the time Al Gore took the podium at the Democratic National Convention, actor Richard Dreyfuss had already met with the vice president. In fact, the star of "Mr. Holland's Opus" had scored even more impressive coups. There was his two-hour tete-a-tete with President Clinton and his lunch with key Middle East peace negotiators. He had traveled to Israel three times and met with then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres. No one is expecting Dreyfuss to help restore Middle East peace.

As the 2000 presidential recount battle raged in Florida, a Washington lawyer named John G. Roberts Jr. traveled to Tallahassee, the state capital, to dispense legal advice. He operated in the shadows at least some of those 37 days, never signing a legal brief and rarely making an appearance at the makeshift headquarters for George W. Bush's legal team.

Rep. Katherine Harris, the former Florida secretary of state who oversaw the disputed 2000 presidential election, admits she's responsible for a vote going uncounted -- her own. Harris forgot to sign her absentee ballot when she voted in Longboat Key's local election March 9. "I feel terrible," the Republican lawmaker said. "It's a mistake. I regret it." Harris said she was in a rush to catch a flight to Washington, D.C., when she handed the unsigned ballot to her husband to send in.

Ian Malone, a brain-damaged boy who caught Al Gore's attention during the 2000 presidential campaign because an HMO threatened to cut his coverage, has died at age 4 1/2. Ian died in his sleep Saturday, his parents said. "Ian's short life was a constant battle to improve the system for those who will come after him," Dylan and Christine Malone said. "We will sorely miss his beautiful smile and ready laugh, and are sorry his journey had to end so soon."

Democrats have scored one small, belated victory in the 2000 presidential recount. President Bush's 2000 campaign has agreed to pay a $90,000 civil fine for failing to disclose fundraising and spending to the Federal Election Commission for its effort to win the Florida recount, the FEC said Tuesday. The campaign paid the fine to settle the case, which resulted from a complaint by Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe.

Could Al Gore have won? That question lingers in the aftermath of an unprecedented inspection and analysis of 175,010 presidential ballots that were rejected by tabulating machines or county canvassing boards during last year's 36-day presidential election recount struggle in Florida. Gore partisans have charged ever since that the Democratic candidate was unfairly denied the White House because the U.S. Supreme Court interceded to suspend the counting of disputed Florida ballots.

Shortly after Al Gore conceded last year's cliffhanger presidential contest to George W. Bush 36 days after election day, eight media companies began a joint effort to determine why so many Florida voters had cast spoiled ballots.

In a way, this hilltop metropolis above the Cumberland River is as close as you can get to Hollywood in the Deep South. It's a city where stars and aspiring stars breathe the same air as mere mortals. Some even call it "the Third Coast." So last week, when Vice President Al Gore uprooted his Washington-based presidential campaign and relocated here, there was the requisite high school marching band, the mandatory front-page headline.

Most Americans say they are now prepared to support George W. Bush as president, even though a solid plurality believes that--if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed the vote count to continue--Al Gore would have won Florida and the presidency, a Los Angeles Times Poll has found. From virtually every angle, the poll underscores the challenge Bush will face in broadening his base of support after the closest presidential contest in more than a century.

One Florida voter penned a plaintive plea on a presidential ballot: "I forgot my glasses and cannot see this. Please put Bush down for my vote." That Bay County ballot wasn't counted last year. Nor was a Jackson County ballot on which someone had circled Al Gore's name, aimed huge arrows at it and wrote Gore in the "write-in" slot. That voter's mistake: not darkening the oval beside Gore's name. Floridians wrongly drew stars, circles and Xs on ballots.

Want to own a piece of the 2000 presidential election? Just name your price. On the one-year anniversary of the marathon election, Palm Beach County began selling 3,500 punch-card voting machines complete with infamous "butterfly" ballots on EBay, the Internet auction site. Officials also donated a voting machine to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.