The Wrong Man is President! Overvotes in the 2000 Presidential Election in Florida

The Wrong Man is President! Overvotes in the 2000 Presidential Election in Florida Using ballot-level data from the NORC Florida ballots project and ballot-image files, I argue that overvoted ballots in the 2000 presidential election in Florida included more than 50,000 votes that were intended to go to either Bush or Gore but instead were discarded. The primary reason for this was defective election administration in the state, especially the failure to use systems that warn the voter when there are too many marks on the ballot and allow the voter to make corrections. If the best type of vote tabulation system used in the state in 2000—precinct-tabulated optical scan ballots—had been used everywhere in Florida, Gore would have won by more than 30,000 votes. The experience in Florida points to the need to gather ballot-level data to evaluate the success of election reform efforts now underway in much of the United States.