The 2000 election provides an illustration of the concept of rational abstention It also illustrates another point made in the text If an election is close, the outcome is likely to be determined in the courts Florida, with its 25 electoral votes, proved to be the decisive state The winner of that state’s electoral votes would win the presidency The outcome in that state was not determined until late November, when Florida’s Secretary of State, Republican Katherine Harris, declared George Bush the winner by a few hundred votes Mr Gore took the case to court The Florida State Supreme Court ordered a recount The recounting process proved to be one of the most bizarre chapters in American political history Thousands of lawyers descended on the state Each ballot in key counties was scrutinized in an effort to determine which candidate each voter “intended” to choose Chads, the small pieces of paper that are removed from a punch-card ballot, turned out to be of crucial importance “Hanging chads,” which occurred when the ballot was not thoroughly punched and which literally remained hanging from the ballot, prevented a ballot from being counted by the state’s electric counting machines The Florida’s Supreme Court ruled that the roughly 170,000 ballots that had been discarded by the machines because they were not properly punched had to be re-examined As the recounting went on, other controversies arose Pursuant to Florida law, Ms Harris had ordered County Clerks to remove ex-felons from their registered voter lists One clerk, seeing her own name on the list, refused to remove the names Ms Harris had come up with a list of 57,700 exfelons for her “scrub list.” The precise number of voters removed is not known.Harper’s Magazine columnist Greg Palast charges that 90% of the Attributed to Libby Rittenberg and Timothy Tregarthen Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books/ Saylor.org 833