The Presidential Election Dispute of 2000

George W. Bush was not declared the official winner of the 2000 presidential election until several weeks after election day when the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the existing counts of votes in Florida were valid and not subject to further legal challenge. The election results were the source of numerous legal challenges, public accusations, name-calling, and political acrimony that has lingered for years.

Why was this election outcome and challenge so fraught with conflict?

1. The nature of political campaigns in the United States is such that the winner takes all. There is no consolation prize. If you get one more vote than 50 percent, you win; one less, and you lose. With political careers and political power on the line, election opponents present themselves as the ones who will solve the nation’s problems and their adversaries as people who will do the exact opposite — make things bad or worse. Supporters of political candidates take on the same kind of fervor in their beliefs. If the candidate they support wins, all is well. If instead the “enemy” wins, they are greatly distressed. Clearly, these kinds of deeply held emotional attachments to candidates lend themselves more to conflict than to compromise.
2. Americans have a keen sense of fair play. Even when they are not happy with the outcome of a contest, if the rules were followed, they are generally willing to accept the results. If it appears that an opponent was given an unfair advantage or that he or she cheated, people are naturally upset. Such was the case in the 2000 election — Bush and Gore supporters both marshaled evidence that suggested a lack of fairness in the way the ballots were counted in Florida.
3. The issues were very complicated — ballot formats, “chads,” legal jurisdiction, etc. When issues are complicated, they are more subject to interpretation and, consequently, disagreement and conflict.
4. There was no clear leader to help resolve the dispute; the very dispute itself centered on who the leader should be. The Supreme Court — the official, constitutional final authority — was not trusted by some because it was perceived to have a bias toward Bush because a majority of justices were appointed by Republican presidents.
5. Bush was about to win the presidential election even though he didn’t win a majority of the popular vote, something which had happened only two times before in American political history.

Conditions for Cooperation or Conflict

What can we learn from these four episodes of political cooperation and conflict in American political history? While a much broader study of such events would be required to make a conclusion with any degree of certainty, some patterns emerge that are consistent:

1. Conflict is likely to occur where there are long-standing, strong opposing views on an issue, where there is no clear leadership, and where the issues are complicated. Additionally, people are unlikely to make compromises in such circumstances when there does not seem to be an immediate benefit or need to do so.
2. Compromise is likely to occur where issues are uncomplicated, there is broad public agreement (or at least support for getting something done), there is a compelling need to act, and there is strong, vocal leadership on the issue.

Given this analysis, we cannot engineer conditions that will always allow for compromise rather than conflict. There are times and issues that are bound to produce conflict. To promote healthier civic dialogue, however, citizens can be better informed about complex issues and strive to understand why people have opinions that are different from ours. Doing so will create a mood of compromise even on issues that tend to produce more conflict than compromise.