Presidential Elections 2000

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.

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.

They're known as the "Iron Triangle": George W. Bush's very tight, very loyal and, until recently, very successful trio of top advisors. The best thing about the troika is a discipline so steely it could make an Olympic athlete flinch. And the worst? Quite possibly that same single-mindedness, a trait that has kept them hewing to a single strategy through a changing campaign: Run against President Clinton, and Al Gore will lose.

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.

A cousin of George W. Bush played a key role in the election night decision by Fox News Channel to call the race for the Texas governor, prompting the cable channel to lead a stampede of networks in declaring Bush the president-elect. John Ellis is a consultant hired by Fox to run its election night "decision desk," the team that analyzes exit poll data and recommends when news executives should project a winner in each state.

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.

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.

One of Al Gore's first hires after he was elected to Congress in 1976 was Peter Knight, a hard-charging 25-year-old aide earning $20,700 a year. Roy Neel, a former Tennessee sportswriter, soon followed. Gregory Simon, a rock 'n' roll drummer until age 30, joined Gore's Senate staff in 1991. Jack Quinn, a lawyer, signed on to Gore's ill-fated 1988 bid for the presidency before becoming his vice presidential chief of staff.

Here's how three psychologists, consulting with historians, classified presidents into eight personality types: * DOMINATORS Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Andrew Johnson, Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, Theodore Roosevelt, Chester A. Arthur * MAINTAINERS George Bush, Harry S. Truman, William McKinley. * INNOCENTS William Howard Taft, Warren G. Harding, Ulysses S. Grant. * INTELLECTUALS Jimmy Carter, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Garfield, Rutherford B. Hayes.

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.