Misvotes, Undervotes and Overvotes: The 2000 Presidential Election in Florida

Abstract

The 2000 presidential election was the most controversial U.S. election in recent history, mainly due to the disputed outcome of the election in Florida. Elsewhere in this issue, Richard Smith analyzes the high vote for Pat Buchanan in Palm Beach county. As background for his article, we summarize this and other voting-related issues that may have affected the outcome of the election in Florida, such as the undervote in counties that used a punch-card ballot and the overvote in counties that used multicolumn and multipage ballots.