Bush v. Gore: Bonus - What If…

Summary

Podcast Summary: Fiasco – “Bush v. Gore: Bonus - What If…”

Introduction

In the bonus episode of Fiasco, titled “Bush v. Gore: Bonus - What If…”, host Leon Nayfak delves deeper into the pivotal moments of the 2000 U.S. presidential election. This episode explores the intricate "what if" scenarios surrounding the Florida recount, examining how small turning points could have altered the election's outcome. By featuring insightful interviews with key figures like Ralph Nader and Mary Frances Berry, the episode sheds light on the multifaceted nature of the election and its lasting impact on American politics.

Ralph Nader’s Perspective on the 2000 Election

Ralph Nader, America's renowned consumer advocate and Green Party presidential candidate in 2000, provides a critical analysis of the election's dynamics and his role in influencing its outcome.

• Nader’s Campaign Strategy and Its Impact

  Nader discusses his motivations for running as a third-party candidate, emphasizing his desire to present an alternative to the entrenched two-party system. He reflects on how his candidacy was perceived as a disruptor that potentially siphoned votes away from Al Gore, thereby aiding George W. Bush's victory.

  Ralph Nader [03:30]: "What about poverty in the land of the free, home of the brave, booming economy? On the one hand, 20% child poverty in the USA, richest country in the world."

• Critique of the Democratic and Republican Candidates

  Nader critiques both major party candidates, highlighting Al Gore's cautious approach and George W. Bush's shortcomings. He argues that Gore's inability to take pioneering stands and Bush's corporate-friendly policies left both candidates fundamentally similar in terms of their support for crony capitalism and militarism.

  Ralph Nader [05:17]: "On the biggest issue of all, which is the corporate state, crony capitalism, corporate welfare, militarism, they were increasingly alike."

• Election Dynamics and Media Influence

  Nader points out the challenges third-party candidates face within a duopolistic system, particularly regarding media attention and voter perception. He criticizes the media's focus on the two major parties, which marginalized his campaign and limited the public's exposure to alternative viewpoints.

  Ralph Nader [07:16]: "It was not an exciting election. You had boring candidates. Al Gore is a very boring candidate. George W. Bush was a boring candidate."

The 2000 Florida Recount and Voter Disenfranchisement

Mary Frances Berry, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and former chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, provides an in-depth examination of the issues surrounding voter disenfranchisement in Florida during the 2000 election.

• Felon Purge and Its Consequences

  Berry outlines the controversial process Florida undertook to purge felons from the voter rolls. The flawed methodology led to over a thousand legitimate voters being erroneously removed, disproportionately affecting African American and Latino communities.

  Mary Frances Berry [17:19]: "In 2000, it was illegal for anyone with a felony conviction to vote in Florida even after they had served their time. So in 2000, the state of Florida commissioned a contractor to create a list of felons living in the state and to ensure that they weren't registered to vote. The list was deeply flawed and resulted in more than a thousand legal voters being turned away at the polls."

• Testimonies from Affected Voters

  Berry recounts poignant testimonies from voters who were wrongfully disenfranchised. One such story involves a black minister who, despite never being convicted of a felony, was publicly denounced at the polling place, leading to a deeply personal sense of injustice and exclusion.

  Mary Frances Berry [20:31]: "He felt slingshotted back to slavery when they told him that he was just. And he was so disconsolate even by the time he came to the hearing."

• Impact on Legislation and Federal Response

  In response to these revelations, Berry and her commission advocated for substantial legislative changes. Their efforts culminated in the passage of the Help America Vote Act, aimed at addressing electoral system deficiencies. However, Berry acknowledges the limitations of federal oversight in a system where states retain significant control over elections.

  Mary Frances Berry [24:00]: "The Election Assistance Commission was not given the authority to force the states to do anything because Congress couldn't give them the authority to do that."

• Ongoing Challenges and Reforms

  Berry reflects on the enduring challenges of ensuring fair and consistent election administration across states. She emphasizes the need for enhanced federal support and stricter oversight to prevent future instances of voter suppression and disenfranchisement.

  Mary Frances Berry [25:51]: "I do think the answer is for now, for Congress to give more powers to the Election Assistance Commission to hold hearings, which it doesn't have to call people in to monitor them, to staff them, to show that some people weren't serious about it."

Conclusions and Reflections

The episode concludes by highlighting subsequent developments, such as Florida's 2018 amendment to restore voting rights to felons and the 2019 law imposing financial obligations as a prerequisite for voting. These legislative actions underscore the ongoing struggle to balance voter enfranchisement with regulatory measures.

Mary Frances Berry [27:02]: "In 2018, Florida voters passed an amendment to the state constitution restoring voting rights to approximately 1 million Floridians with felonies on their records. The following year, Republican legislators passed a law stating that people with felonies cannot cast a ballot until they've paid off their outstanding fines and court fees."

Through comprehensive interviews and meticulous analysis, Leon Nayfak’s bonus episode of Fiasco offers a nuanced exploration of the 2000 Bush v. Gore election, revealing the complex interplay of candidate strategies, voter suppression tactics, and legislative responses that continue to influence American electoral politics.

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Notable Quotes

• Ralph Nader [03:30]: "What about poverty in the land of the free, home of the brave, booming economy? On the one hand, 20% child poverty in the USA, richest country in the world."

• Ralph Nader [05:17]: "On the biggest issue of all, which is the corporate state, crony capitalism, corporate welfare, militarism, they were increasingly alike."

• Mary Frances Berry [17:19]: "The list was deeply flawed and resulted in more than a thousand legal voters being turned away at the polls."

• Mary Frances Berry [20:31]: "He felt slingshotted back to slavery when they told him that he was just."

• Mary Frances Berry [25:51]: "I do think the answer is for now, for Congress to give more powers to the Election Assistance Commission to hold hearings..."

This episode serves as a critical reflection on one of the most controversial elections in U.S. history, providing listeners with a deeper understanding of the systemic issues that can influence electoral outcomes.

Transcript

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[Ralph Nader]

You can't predict these things. You have to make your decision on the best available knowledge. You know, once you get into retroactive clairvoyance, there's nobody left of anything.

[Mary Frances Berry]

You had all of these different people calling from Florida and leaving messages saying, do something, why don't you do something?

[Leon Nayfak]

Hello fiasco listeners, It's Leon Navak. This is the fourth in a series of bonus episodes we're dropping in this feed. The goal is to showcase some of the best interviews we did for Bush v. Gore, in which we covered the ins and outs of the 2000 Florida recount. In today's episode, we're looking at the 2000 campaign, as in the campaign itself, the thing that happened in the months leading up to the recount. For all the what ifs packed into the 30 days that followed Election Day, the campaign that preceded it was full of tiny turning points that could have changed the outcome one way or another. As you heard me say on the first episode of the show, the Elian Gonzalez saga and the environmental activism around the Homestead Air Force Base were just two factors that might have changed the razor thin margin on Election Day. So today we have two Interviews taking a deeper dive into the what ifs that might have prevented a recount altogether. First up, Ralph Nader. Nader has been America's most famous consumer advocate since 1965 when he published a groundbreaking expose about the auto industry. Nader trained an entire generation of activists. They called themselves Nader's Raiders and he deputized them to investigate all kinds of injustice, inefficiency and corruption. By 2000, Nader was an icon and he ran for president as the Green Party candidate, railing against the two party system in sold out arenas.

[Ralph Nader]

What about poverty in the land of the free home of the brave booming economy? On the one hand, 20% child poverty in the USA, richest country in the world. There are countries in Western Europe that have abolished poverty, poverty.

[Leon Nayfak]

We interviewed Nader for the first episode of the season because his candidacy is so often blamed for Gore's defeat. And we wanted to hear his perspective on it. Nader mapped out why he thought he was a necessary alternative and why he thought Gore struggled as a candidate because.

[Ralph Nader]

He was the front runner, he was too cautious. And because he was too cautious, he didn't take pioneering stands. He thought he could just say to the public, look, I had eight years of experience in Washington's Vice President, I was senator, I was representative, I was a journalist in Vietnam. And who's this guy, this bumbling governor from Texas who couldn't put four sentences together and had a horrible record on children's poverty to corporate pollution.

[Leon Nayfak]

And when you looked at him and Bush side by side on the campaign trail and I realized you're making a distinction between the old Al Gore and the Al Gore who was running for president. When you looked at them side by side, what did you see?

[Ralph Nader]

Bush was horrible. I mean, one of the reasons I ran was to push the Democrats into a more comprehensive assault on Bush's record because they weren't doing it. And so I was saying to myself, well you know, I gotta show em how to do it. Unfortunately, in the two party duopoly, the press doesn't pay attention to third party agendas. By and large, when you were on.

[Leon Nayfak]

The trail, I know that you sort of had a recurring argument that you would make that these two guys are in many ways the same, or that you could make distinctions on certain policy areas, but that you saw them in some ways as fundamentally the same. Can you elaborate on that or explain it?

[Ralph Nader]

Yeah, on certain social safety nets, obviously they're very different on things like child health and child care and Medicare preservation and some of the more basic civil liberties Civil rights, housing issues. The Democrats were of course, better. I mean, nowhere near enough, but they were very distinctly better than the Republicans. But on the biggest issue of all, which is the corporate state, crony capitalism, corporate welfare, militarism, they were increasingly alike.

[Leon Nayfak]

Did that carry over into a sense among the electorate that this election wasn't that important? Did you detect an unusual level of disengagement due to these two specific candidates?

[Ralph Nader]

Let's put it this way. It was not an exciting election. You had boring candidates. Al Gore is a very boring candidate. George W. Bush was a boring candidate. They agreed with each other incredible number of times on the debate. Somebody counted once that Bush and Gore agreed with each other over 20 times in one presidential debate. And so the attention of the activists was they would paint George W. Bush as, you know, bad on the environment, which is true. But then Gore, he allowed Bill Clinton to shut him down on regulating auto pollution, fuel efficiency standards, and generally were very unexciting in the area of environment, which is his principal claim to fame. People saw that he wasn't authentic when he said, I'm for power, for the people, not the corporations. I'm not for the insurance companies. I'm not for the oil companies. People really didn't believe him. It was too little, too late and not specific enough. He could have done a lot, but he was coasting because he thought he had it in the bag.

[Leon Nayfak]

It's interesting to hear you say that he was cautious because he thought he had it in the bag. I feel like there's a competing narrative that, or at least one I've absorbed somehow, that he was cautious because he didn't know who he was.

[Ralph Nader]

Well, when I say he was cautious cause he thought he had it in a bag. That wasn't the only reason he was cautious. He's a cautious politician to begin with. In his prior races. Very, very cautious. Finger to the wind of the powers that be. That's Al Gore. Fingers to the wind of the powers that be.

[Leon Nayfak]

Do you agree that he. That there's this phrase that he didn't know who he was? Is that something that you subscribe to?

[Ralph Nader]

Oh, yeah, definitely. If you look at the way he came out for each debate, he was a different Al Gore. One time he was aggressive. Another time he was aloof. A third time he was like a boxer in the clinch. I agree with Governor Bush. You know, over 20 times in one.

[Leon Nayfak]

Debate, you said you. You didn't do much campaigning in Florida that you'd just gone down for. I think you said two and A half days. Was that because you didn't want to draw votes from Gore in a battleground state as close as Florida?

[Ralph Nader]

No, it was. It was not the best management of my schedule. I mean, I wasn't polling that high in Florida. I was polling much higher in places like Massachusetts, California, Oregon, Washington state, Illinois. And that's where I wanted to spend a lot of time because I was looking for the aggregate vote. I wasn't in the running for electoral college votes. I was looking try to get 5% of the total popular vote so we could qualify four years hence for federal funds.

[Leon Nayfak]

Were there Gore people or people from the DNC who begged you to not campaign in battleground states?

[Ralph Nader]

Well, in the last few weeks they didn't beg me, they opposed me. They literally took people like Gloria Steinem and so on on a tour to turn against my candidacy. Some of them took out ads attacking me.

[Leon Nayfak]

Were there any backchannel efforts to get you to not go to those states, like Yada? Buchanan, for example, very deliberately did not go to battleground states. He was only also going for 5%. He campaigned only in safe states that were safe for Bush.

[Ralph Nader]

Yeah, just out of principle. I wouldn't listen to that sort of thing because you have to respect the voters in every state. You can't say I'm not going to go to a state because it's a battleground state that's disrespecting potential voters and the interest of all voters to have more voices and choices. That's why I rigorously campaigned in every 50 states. No other candidate did that small candidate or major party candidate because it was a matter of principle with me.

[Leon Nayfak]

Do you remember the emergence of the Naders Raiders for Gore?

[Ralph Nader]

Yeah, very much. I was campaigning in Minnesota and got their one or two days press. But you know, they weren't in a position to adopt the principle I had. They weren't running, therefore they didn't want to be obliged to respect the voters. They just saw the winner take all electoral college duopoly cul de sac and had to adjust to it.

[Leon Nayfak]

Did you feel like betrayed by them at all? That these were your supporters who were going against this principle of yours about respecting the voters? Did it feel like these guys don't really understand you?

[Ralph Nader]

Well, they were more numerous in 2004. Almost the entire progressive lineup of well known progressives dropped their support of me in 2004.

[Leon Nayfak]

Is that because they just felt so sad about the fact that your, your votes in Florida could have been Gore votes and thus Gore could have been president?

[Ralph Nader]

No, it's like like all smart people, they were fact deprived and they didn't realize that there were 10 sina qua nons, any one of which, if changed, would have won for Gore and electoral college and 300,000 Democrat voters going for Bush. The Supreme Court loss of Tennessee. They bought into blaming the Greens and me for every other sine qua non, giving us delusions of grandeur. It's amazing. It's almost a intellectual tick. It doesn't matter how smart they are, how savvy they are, all they look at is the difference between the two major candidates and how many votes I got. Every third party candidate in Florida got more than 535 votes, by the way. But the one thing you can look back on is that a winner take all system Electoral College determination is full of mischief.

[Leon Nayfak]

All right, that was Ralph Nader, the Green Party presidential candidate in 2000. For many frustrated Gore supporters, Ralph Nader's candidacy is one of the most enduring what ifs of the election. But there's another election Day question mark, one that received much less attention during the recount. That's coming up after the break. Together T Mobile for Business and industry leaders are innovating with our advanced 5G solutions. For Walt Disney Studios, we transformed movie making by syncing teams in California with a remote production hub in Hawaii, enabling picture perfect collaboration to help bring Lilo and Stitch to theaters this summer. For PGA of America, we deliver pro level efficiency with connected security and ticketless entry for smoother operations, seamless transactions and better fan experiences from gate to green. And for tractor Supply, we put 5G business Internet to work across 2200 stores, cultivating AI driven customer experiences to keep things running seamlessly inside curbside and countryside. We're helping industries redefine what's possible because with a partner that's as committed to your business as you are, there are no limits. Discover how our advanced 5G solutions can take your business further@t mobile.com now have.

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[Mary Frances Berry]

Some people said that they went down and they were told they weren't on the registration rolls and they couldn't understand why they weren't on the rolls because they'd been voting before.

[Leon Nayfak]

This is Mary Frances Berry, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She's referring to a population of largely African American and Latino voters who said they were turned away from the polls on election day. In 2000, Barry was the chair of the U.S. commission on Civil Rights, which was tasked with investigating complaints of disenfranchisement around the country.

[Mary Frances Berry]

We had to set up a hotline before the election so that if there were any complaints, we would have a number out there that people could call. We had done that in other elections, but in this one you had all of these different, different people calling from Florida and leaving messages saying, do something, why don't you do something?

[Leon Nayfak]

And so this was like an unusual volume of complaints. And they were specifically concentrated in Florida.

[Mary Frances Berry]

Absolutely. They were a volume higher than any I had seen in all the time I'd been on the commission. And I was first appointed to the Commission in 1980.

[Leon Nayfak]

In early 2001, the Commission on Civil Rights investigated the large number of Florida voters who, who had reported problems at polling sites that prevented them from voting. Over the course of their investigation, Berry and her colleagues heard testimony from dozens of Florida voters and officials, including Governor Jeb Bush.

[Mary Frances Berry]

I asked for a briefing on the.

[Leon Nayfak]

Alleged concern that felons were voting and that non felons were not allowed to vote because they were allegedly felons. One of the priorities of the investigation was to get to the bottom of what's now known as Florida's felon purge. In 2000, it was illegal for anyone with a felony conviction to vote in Florida even after they had served their time. So in 2000, the state of Florida commissioned a contractor to create a list of felons living in the state and to ensure that they weren't registered to vote. The list was deeply flawed and resulted in more than a thousand legal voters being turned away at the polls. The state office in charge of this operation was one that you might be familiar with at this point.

[Mary Frances Berry]

Katherine Harris, as secretary of state, had direct responsibility under the law for the elections. And she testified. I recall her saying something like she was in a hurry and didn't have much time because she was going to New York on a shopping trip or some thing like that, which I didn't understand why she told us that. But anyway, she said that she had handed it over to her subordinates. And we in particular, asked her. We had testimony from a firm that her office had hired to purge, clean up the voting rolls, to make sure that there were no extraneous names and it was all clear and to do it scientifically. And the head of this company, which had many contracts with the government, testified that under oath that they told her office that if they did the procedure the way they had asked them to do, they would get a lot of false positives of people who were actually registered and ask if they should change the procedure. And that Harris office and her staff told them to go ahead and do it the way they had told them to do it, which they did. And so the result was that there were people whose names were confused with other people's names, people who were told they weren't registered when they were. And one black minister testified that when he went to vote, took his family with him, he liked his kids to watch when he went to vote, to get the experience of seeing the polling place and all that. And he went in and he'd voted before, and they told him in a very loud voice where everyone could hear that he was a convicted felon. And he was outraged because he said, not only am I not ever convicted of anything, I haven't even been charged with anything. And the only time I've been to the courthouse is when I served on a jury. So I don't understand how I could be a convicted felon. Could you call up somebody and find out, this is a mistake? And then they said they couldn't get through to the office where they would check this. So he ended up having to slink out of the room with everybody looking at him as this convicted felon, when, in fact, his name was on the rolls. And he had been on the rolls he said he felt slingshotted back to slavery when they told him that he was just. And he was so disconsolate even by the time he came to the hearing. So it was really sort of an outra sort of thing that happened.

[Leon Nayfak]

Was it your sense at that point that the felon purge list was the primary driver of the problems you were getting reports of on election Day?

[Mary Frances Berry]

Yeah, it was our understanding, or it seemed to me that that list, that process was a major problem, that there were any number of people who were not on the rolls. The other major problem that compounded it was that we found out in one county that the election office, state election office, made sure that there were cell phones given to some of the precincts, but there weren't any given to the precincts where there were Latino voters or where there were black voters.

[Leon Nayfak]

So that cell phones they could use.

[Mary Frances Berry]

To create that the volunteers who were there or who were hired to conduct the election, the people there at the tables during election, checking the rolls and so on, could call up if they had some problem and they didn't give cell phones in some district. They were very particular about who had a cell phone and who could call up and who could not. And it just turned out that the ones who couldn't call up were the district where there were the problems.

[Leon Nayfak]

Right. Can you describe the reaction to your report and how it worked politically, what its impact was politically?

[Mary Frances Berry]

Sometimes when you do reports in government agencies like the commission that are investigative and informative, the reports sort of collect dust. You know, there might be a one day half story about you did a report, but then after that, you know, it served its purpose. It has been a safety valve for people who want to talk about it or complain or do whatever, and you make your recommendations. But I was determined when I was chair of the commission that we would only do reports that were important and substantive and that we would make sure that our recommendations had some kind of teeth and were in conformity with what we found. And that we would look toward trying to get some kind of legislation, help the Congress and the President in trying to get some kind of legislation to remedy whatever problems we found. Okay. So the report came out and it did not just gather dust. The Senate, I think Senator Dodd from Connecticut, Chris Dodd was chair of the committee over there that considered it. I remember Dianne Feinstein was, Was on the committee, a leading member of it. That committee and its staff held hearings on the report. We recommended that the federal government pass a law which set up some kind of election commission and in fact, required the states to change and clean up their procedures so that we wouldn't have this kind of purge that took place from this company that ended up calling people felons who weren't felons and all that sort of stuff. And that the states looked to see that polling places are accessible and that the Congress. And also that discouraged the states from having police officers patrolling up and down or highway patrolmen on the roads leading to the polling places, which sometimes intimidated people who wanted to vote and didn't know what was happening. And that all of these different problems ought to be addressed by legislation. And I was pleased to see the Congress passed some legislation called Help America Vote act and set up an Election Assistance Commission and appropriated a bunch of money. Sometimes Congress authorizes things, but they don't appropriate any money to give to the states in order for them to fix some of these problems.

[Leon Nayfak]

How effective was that legislation and the formation of that organization?

[Mary Frances Berry]

Well, after the law passed and the money came and people's attention went elsewhere, the Election Assistance Commission had no teeth. I knew that to begin with because the constitution in Article 1 leaves the way elections are conducted to the states unless there is discrimination under the 14th Amendment. And then you can file a civil rights complaint, which is what we had been looking at. But the normal election process, that is, how do they handle the rolls and where the polling play, all that stuff is under the control of the states. So the Election Assistance Commission was not given the authority to force the states to do anything because Congress couldn't give them the authority to do that. But they thought that if they gave them the money and then monitored how they spent the money, then indeed they might change some of these procedures. And some of the states did. A lot of them did. They used the money to buy new equipment. And so you wouldn't have all those chad things again to use paper ballots. And they. Some of them put out policies where they wouldn't have an overriding police presence around the roads to elections. I mean, there were some things that actually got changed as a result.

[Leon Nayfak]

You sort of got at this with the answer you just gave. But do you think there's the fact that a national election is administered by the states in this federalist system that we have is inherently flawed. Do you think it's possible for a national election to be fair and fairly administered and equally administered across the country when each state is in charge of their own operation?

[Mary Frances Berry]

Well, one answer to that question is that we've had federal elections in which federal officials have been involved in corrupt behavior. So it doesn't necessarily mean that because they're state officials. So that's one answer. Okay. I think that it's okay tounless we amend the Constitution, which is hard to do. You can't change that procedure. I do think the answer is for now, for the Congress to give more powers to the Election Assistance Commission to hold hearings, which it doesn't have to call people in to monitor them, to staff them, to show that some people weren't serious about it. They didn't give very much staff to the commission. That commission, it didn't hardly had anybody to do anything. So just putting some sunlight on what people were doing and having enough staff to do that I think would help the process.

[Leon Nayfak]

In 2018, Florida voters passed an amendment to the state constitution restoring voting rights to approximately 1 million Floridians with felonies on their records. The following year, Republican legislators passed a law stating that people with felonies cannot cast a ballot until they've paid off their outstanding fines and court fees. As a result, Most of the 1 million people who regained the right to vote back in 2018 still can't actually do it. Fiasco Bush v. Gore is produced by Prologue Projects and distributed by Pushkin Industries. The show is produced by Madeline Kaplan, Ula Culpa, Andrew Parsons and me, Leon Nayfak. We had additional editorial support from Lisa Chase and Daniel Rice Highway. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. Do you own a business that's ready to thrive? It's time to let Intuit QuickBooks take things like unpaid invoices and tracking expenses off your plate so you can take things to the next level. Intuit QuickBooks is an all in one business platform that can help with those daily day to day tasks like invoicing and expenses. Manage and grow your business all in one place. Intuit QuickBooks your way to money Money Movement services are provided by Intuit Payments, Inc. Licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Looking for excitement? Chumba Casino is here.

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