[1] The controversy began on election night, November 7, 2000, when the national television networks, using information provided to them by the Voter News Service, an organization formed by the Associated Press to help determine the outcome of the election through early result tallies and exit polling, first called Florida for Gore in the hour after polls closed in the peninsula (in the Eastern time zone) but about ten minutes before they closed in the heavily Republican counties of the panhandle (in the Central time zone).

[2] Gore phoned Bush the night of the election to concede, then retracted his concession after learning how close the Florida count was.

On November 9, the Bush campaign announced they had hired George H. W. Bush's former Secretary of State James Baker and Republican political consultant Roger Stone to oversee their legal team,[8][9] and the Gore campaign hired Bill Clinton's former Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

The Gore campaign requested that disputed ballots in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, and Volusia Counties be counted by hand.

Florida's Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, a Republican, then gave counties until 2:00 p.m. on November 15 to provide reasons for recounting their ballots.

The next day, the Florida Supreme Court allowed manual recounts in Palm Beach and Broward Counties to continue but left it to a state judge to decide whether Harris must include those votes in the final tally.

The Gore campaign sued to force Miami-Dade County to continue its recount, but the Florida Supreme Court refused to consider the request.

After the election, a New York Times six month long investigation showed that 680 of the overseas absentee ballots were illegally counted.

On December 9, the U.S. Supreme Court suspended the manual recount, in progress for only several hours, on the grounds that irreparable harm could befall Bush, according to a concurring opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia.

The same day, the Florida House approved awarding the state's electoral votes to Bush, but the matter was moot after the Court's ruling.

Among these was the Palm Beach "butterfly ballot", which resulted in an unusually high number of votes for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan.

[22] A December 4 article exposing flaws in the process correctly claimed that many of these were not felons and should have been eligible to vote under Florida law.

[23] Additionally, this Florida election produced many more "overvotes" than usual, especially in predominantly African-American precincts in Duval County (Jacksonville), where some 21,000 ballots had multiple markings, such as two or more choices for president.

It was anecdotal evidence at best, and local authorities argued persuasively that the police presence near a polling place was pure coincidence.

Such explanations did little to lessen the sense of anger among black Democrats.Various flaws and improprieties in Florida's electoral processes were immediately apparent, while others were reported after later investigation.

The ballot displayed the list of presidential running-mate pairs alternately across two adjacent pages, with a column of punch spaces down the middle.

The court ruled that counties had that authority, and to allow time for these efforts, extended the statutory deadline for the manual recounts.

Regarding the second issue, the court ruled that the statutory scheme must be interpreted in light of the Florida state constitution's declaration that "all political power is inherent in the people," with any ambiguities therefore construed "liberally".

The decision was extremely controversial due to its partisan split and the majority's unusual instruction that its judgment in Bush v. Gore should not set precedent but should be "limited to the present circumstances".

They argue that American democracy is ... a far stricter, Lockean, Anglo-American system based on the letter of the law and a successful vote cast by a rational, responsible voter.

They also concluded that had a full recount of all undervotes and overvotes taken place, Gore would have won, though his legal team never pursued such an option.

[4] An analysis of the NORC data by University of Pennsylvania researcher Steven F. Freeman and journalist Joel Bleifuss concluded that, no matter what standard is used, after a recount of all uncounted votes, Gore would have been the victor.

From the beginning of the controversy, politicians, litigants and the press focused exclusively on the undervotes, in particular incompletely punched hanging chads.

Undervotes (ballots that did not register any vote when counted by machine) were the subject of much media coverage, most of the lawsuits and the Florida Supreme Court ruling.

"[4] USA Today, The Miami Herald, and Knight Ridder commissioned accounting firm BDO Seidman to count undervotes.

BDO Seidman's results, reported in USA Today, show that under the strictest standard, where only a cleanly punched ballot with a fully removed chad was counted, Gore's margin was three votes.

Some media reports focused on undervotes (chad blocked hole, wrong ink or pencil used, partial oval mark not detected, humidity affected scanner, ballot feeder misalignment), while others also included overvotes (hole punched or oval filled plus a write-in name, other multi-marked ballots).

Half of the overvotes in Duval County had one presidential candidate marked on each page, making their vote illegal under Florida law.

However, an overvote shall not occur when the elector casts a vote on the ballot card but then enters a sham or unqualified name in the write-in space for that same office.

Directed by Jay Roach, it starred Kevin Spacey as Ron Klain, Bob Balaban as Benjamin Ginsberg, Ed Begley Jr. as David Boies, Laura Dern as Katherine Harris, John Hurt as Warren Christopher, Denis Leary as Michael Whouley, Bruce McGill as Mac Stipanovich, and Tom Wilkinson as James Baker.