Discussion of Results:

Several news organizations paid for a detailed study of the 2000 Presidential Election in Florida.  Interest in the issue was high at the time it was commissioned.  When the results of their study was released, however it met with little interest.  Whatever the reasons for this lack of interest (the public has moved pass the issue or the media is deliberately burying it) the fact remains that the election did raise some interesting issues.

Analysis focused on rejected ballots in Florida, and the Nader/third party issue nationwide.  The most striking result from my project was 3Drejectedtotal.jpg.  This ortho image clearly shows four counties where an exceptionally high number of ballots were rejected.  Three of the four counties were won by Al Gore.  Considering this election was basically decided by an approximately 500 vote difference in Florida, the correct result may never actually be known.  This claim seems fair considering the number of rejected ballots and the margin of victory.  It is clear that the total number of rejected ballots in the State of Florida exceeded the margin of victory.  Given that the 3D image seems to indicate that a high concentration of these votes are in counties that Al Gore carried quite easily, it safe to assume that if these rejected ballots were the results of voter/machine error instead of deliberate error (spoiling), then Al Gore could have gained a significant number of valuable votes.  I believe this was the Gore campagin's contention in fighting for a hand recount of the ballots.

One shortcoming of this view of the election, is knowing the voter's intention.  There is no criteria I can think of, that could be used that would fairly assess the intention of the voter, whose ballot has been rejected.  Even after what I would call a limited analysis, it is clear that the message in the data is that the way the election was conducted in Florida was faulty.  High rejection rates indicate a systemic problem, and that measures need to be taken so that in a similarly close election voters can have confidence that the end result is correct and their vote will count.

The other issue was the impact of Ralph Nader or third party candidates.  Ross Perot's run for the presidency in 1992 split the right of centre vote and played a role in George Bush Sr. losing his re-election bid.  Due to the dominance of the two major parties in the United States, the Democrats and the Republicans, a third party candidate getting any significant amount of votes could distort the election result if they appeal to one side of the electorate more than the other (left vs. right).  Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and I believe he was instrumental in starting public interest research groups (pirgs).  Needless to say he is a social activist and appeals to many on the left side of the political spectrum.  A less popular third candidate was Pat Buchanan who is a populist politician better know for his anti-abortion and traditional values views.  He appeals mainly to the far right-wing vote.

To see what the impact of the third party candidate Ralph Nader was on the election it made sense to have Ralph Nader's vote totals subtracted by Pat Buchanan's totals.  Nader received by quite a large margin the most third party votes, so it seemed logical that he not Buchanan would have the most impact.  Because Nader would likely split votes from Gore (left-wing candidate) and Buchanan from Bush (right-wing candidate) for fairness I subtracted Nader's total by Buchanan and then compared it with the margin's of victory.  The result was naderbuch_margin.jpg.  This clearly shows that the Nader may have created several very close results in States, including Florida.  It should be noted that except Florida, Gore won the rest of the close states where Nader may have had an impact.

It should be mentioned that analyzing the impact of a third party is not necessarily reliable or fair.  For instance, it is conceptually popular to view a third party candidate as splitting the vote.  In this case Nader a left-wing candidate has been accused of taking away votes from Al Gore, the mainstream left-leaning candidate (some may disagree about how left-wing).  A strong argument could be made that some or many of the people that voted for Nader may have been disillusioned with the major parties' candidates and not voted at all had Nader not ran.  The point is that it is a bit of a stretch to say that because Nader's vote total in a particular state was higher than the margin of victory that it cost Gore the State.  More to the point it is impossible to predict how many of the Nader voters would have switched to Gore had Nader not been running.