Hanging Chads: The Inside Story of the 2000 Presidential Recount in Florida (2004)
Publications
by
Julian Pleasants,
Former Director of the Sam Proctor Oral History Program
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)
Book available through
Amazon
"Julian Pleasants has given us the definitive book on the disputed presidential election of 2000. Hanging Chads reveals how a badly flawed Florida ballot and the denial of a recount awarded the presidency to a candidate who lost by half a million votes in the popular count."
-Former U.S. Senator George McGovern
"Pleasants...offers a new take on the infamous presidential election of 2000. The majority of chapters consist of question-and-answer interviews--all but one conducted by the author--with key figures in the Sunshine State's election debacle."
"In addition to these Q & As, there's a concise introduction chronicling the events that ended with the federal Supreme Court's landmark decision, a helpful 'cast of characters' section and a compendium of court cases and legal terms that comes in handy when navigating the judicial jungle surrounding the election."
-Publishers Weekly review
Hanging Chads, A Book Review
By Jean Reed
Citation: Pleasants, Julian M. Hanging Chads: The Inside Story
of the 2000 Presidential Recount in Florida. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2004. 291 pp. Hardbound $35.00
Dr. Pleasants, Professor of History at the University of Florida and Director of its Oral History Program, provides the general public with an accessible, judicious, and balanced account of the controversies bedeviling the 2000 presidential election recounts in Florida. The book provides the reader with primary source materials--extensive oral interviews with key players--and an interpretative context within which to judge for himself or herself the range of actions, responses, and opinions that characterized those frantic 36 days.
Why do we need yet another book about the 2000 presidential election? We need Hanging Chads to help us make sense of the complex, overheated, messy developments of the Florida recount that took the election into overtime. This inside view derives its credibility from the expertise of its author and the quality of the oral history interviews upon which the book is based.
The organization of Hanging Chads is designed to aid the reader. In 29-page introduction conveys a detailed, chronological story of the contest that kept millions around the world glued to available media outlets. A county-by-county chart of Florida votes follows the introduction, showing 48.8% going to the Republican ticket, 48.8% going to the Democratic ticket, 1.6% to Nader, and .3% to the Reform ticket. Part I details the cast of characters, whereas Part II defines the court cases and legal terms involved. Pleasants devotes the remaining four-fifths of the book (Parts III-VII) to eleven interviews with influential participants in the contest, presented in the question-and-answer format of the oral history interview. The cross section includes two Palm Beach County Canvassing Board officials, two representatives of the media and public information, two politicians, three judges, and two attorneys. These lengthy interviews were culled from those of 43 participants in the recount. Only Al Cardenas, Chair of the Florida Republican Party, and Katherine Harris, Florida's Secretary of State, refused interviews. The often easy-going, reflective tone of the interviews, conducted during 2001 and 2002, testify to the difference that even a short lapse in time can make in perceptions of the election.
Informal as the interviews were, they produce a substantial record of what happened, why it happened, and with what consequences. Cumulative decisions taken early on in the selection of attorneys, legal and political strategy, and the interpretation of law determined the outcome. To head up their legal team, the Republicans shrewdly chose a Democratic attorney from Florida, Barry Richards, thought to be among the best constitutional practitioners. He was given free rein to organize and argue the Bush legal case. Dexter Douglass, a Florida attorney known for his colorful humor and political astuteness, shared the leadership of the Gore team with David Boies. Gore controlled the strategy with greater attention to political opinion than to legal effectiveness. Washington advisors sometimes overrode Douglass, even though he was the local expert.
In addition, all the lawyers and judges agreed that Nader votes in this close contest threw the election to Bush. Asked about Gore's role, interviewees of both parties noted that he made a series of poor decisions costing him the election. The Democrats failed to move quickly from protest, proving that the election returns were in error or marked by fraud, to contest: within ten days after the canvassing board adjourns, the challenger must show that by "reasonable probability," not "reasonable possibility," specified acts could have changed the outcome. Nor did Democrats challenge inconsistent treatment of military ballots. Secretary of State Katherine Harris certified the results, and the Florida legislature insisted upon declaring a slate of electors. The Gore camp did not successfully counter either action.
When the Florida Supreme Court voted 7-0 to condemn Harris' position, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated that decision, charging the Florida court with making, not interpreting the law. The U.S. Supreme Court objected to the lack of any uniform standard with which to judge the intent of the voter. Its intervention put an end to the recount and the hopes of the Democrats. Pleasants concluded that though more people went to the polls to vote for Gore than Bush, we will never know who won the Florida vote (HC 26).
Given the passions of the moment and the dire claims made on both sides, a surprising picture emerges. Some participants remarked that the state reviled as Flori"duh" was no worse than several others. In fact, the lawyers, judges, and media people praised Florida's sunshine laws and the openness at all levels of its judicial system. Anyone in the world could gain access to transcripts and decisions on the Internet minutes after their public release. Moreover, both parties agree that the caliber of lawyers and argument was exceptionally high.
Public myths were dispelled: no conspiracy linked the actions of President Bush in Texas, Governor Jeb Bush in Florida, and Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Testimony to the contrary declared that Harris' office and that of Governor Jeb Bush were barely on speaking terms. Republicans accused Circuit Judge Nikki Ann Clark, an African American Democrat turned down for a promotion by Governor Bush, of being too partisan. They wanted to rescue her. Yet she ruled against Gore in Jacobs v. Seminole County. Likewise, Republicans labeled the Florida Supreme Court the "Dexter Douglass liberal Democratic court," even though that court denied Gore's positions on four separate occasions. Both sides played loose with the facts (28). Nevertheless, democratic institutions survived the heat of passions and the participants regardless of party saw the process as an affirming one. Even the besieged Theresa LePore, creator of the butterfly ballot, consider the election a "good learning experience."
A scrupulously conducted process is crucial to a work so heavily reliant on oral history interviews. Pleasants does not disappoint. He prepared by reading court cases, newspaper and magazine articles, and much of the secondary literature. His participants were chosen for "broad perspective and differing viewpoints" (288). Well-known among the influential leaders of Florida, many of whom he had previously interviewed, Pleasants engaged his subjects with easy familiarity. Before beginning he established the person's credentials and described the situations and issues being addressed. Questions were determined by the appropriate context--some straightforward, most set in a context, and others as statements to which the interviewee responded. Very occasionally, Pleasants posed an undeniably leading question. Whatever the form, a genuine dialogue of equals ensued. These interviews produced corrective information and fresh assessments.
Dr. Pleasants states his methodology in his closing acknowledgments. He used 30-40% of the entire transcript of an interview, choosing the most pertinent and intriguing parts. Editing was kept to a minimum. He did not change actual working, but used ellipses to indicated omitted material. The author's added factual information appears between brackets. Only when clarity necessitated did he "reposition" sentences (288).
To understand why Hanging Chads is a significant contribution both to traditional history and to oral history, we must examine the author and players' role in the work, the underlying ideology and patterns of meaning, and the lessons of Florida election of 2000. The interviews invest the book with an authenticity derived of shared authority. The resulting record is a product of memory buttressed with documentation from court transcripts, taped messages, Internet websites, and the corroboration of other primary players. The oral histories, with their elements of linguistic license and performance, enliven the prosaic legal documents or other records. The interviews admit us to the "emic" or inside view of developments in Florida. Actually, Pleasants functions in a dual role, both as partaker of the Florida election mysteries and as a detached scholar observing from outside.
Ronald Grele would have us look deeper for "hidden levels of discourse" (OHR 45). What do we see of gender, race, and class patterns? What are the power dynamics at work? The gender patterns are contradictory. On the one hand we have a powerful key shaper of events in the African American Circuit Court Judge, Nikki Ann Clark. On the other, Katherine Harris, the Secretary of State, is belitted by a public more concerned with the state of her makeup than her mind. An anthropologist or folklorist would be curious about the racial controversy. Leon County African Americans cried discrimination and interference with their right to vote when some were frightened by state police roadblocks or had difficulty in finding their polling stations. One wishes that Pleasants had queried Judge Nikki Ann Clark abot these claims. Dexter Douglass said they were "just seeing ghosts" (252). Both class and power dynamics were at work when Republicans dismissed the elderly or poor who failed to correctly mark their ballots as "dumb," not worthy to vote.
What ideological or theoretical questions arise from the Florida experience? The interviews highlight vital differences over political philosophy harking back to the birth of nation. Should the Constitution be interpreted narrowly or broadly? Who determines which votes count? Such questions divide Republicans from Democrats. Whereas most Republicans emphasize America as a republic, Democrats generally cherish a more populist view of our democracy. Despite the fickleness of public opinion and the superficiality of media reporting, basic democratic institutions such as the courts have proved durable--a telling civic lesson. For that very reason lawyers and judges of both parties agreed we faced no constitutional crisis. Hanging Chads stands out among contemporary accounts of the 2000 election fiasco in Florida because in the best historical tradition the book clarifies a very complex, confused state of affairs. The multi-disciplinary insights of oral history add depth to the picture. Borrowing the words of E. M. Forster, we welcome this work with "two cheers for democracy."
Works Cited
- Grele, Ronald."Movement without aim: methodological and theoretical problems in oral history" in Perks, Robert and Alistair Thomson, eds. The Oral History Reader. Longdon: Routledge, 1998, 38-52.
- Pleasants, Julian M. Hanging Chads, cited at the article's beginning.
