Bush v. Gore
United States Supreme Court
531 U.S. 98 (2000)
In the disputed 2000 presidential election, Florida's punchcard voting machines produced ambiguous "undervote" and "overvote" ballots that automated counting rejected; after an automatic machine recount narrowed George W. Bush's lead over Al Gore, Gore sought manual recounts in select counties, and the Florida Supreme Court, finding Miami-Dade's failure to manually recount 9,000 undervote ballots placed the result in doubt, ordered a statewide manual recount of undervotes using only the vague standard of discerning "the intent of the voter," without any uniform guidelines for canvassers to apply. Bush sought Supreme Court review, and the Court granted certiorari and a stay.
Whether, in a contested presidential election, the Equal Protection Clause requires states conducting a manual recount to issue uniform rules governing the recount to determine voter intent and give equal weight to each vote.