Chad (according to wikipedia) refers to paper
fragments created when holes are made in a paper, card or similar
synthetic materials, typically computer punched tape or punch
cards. Sometimes chad has been used as a mass noun or as a
countable noun, and the plural is commonly either "chad" (as in "a
pile of chad") or "chads" (as in "the multiple hanging
chads").
Chad were made infamous in the highly contentious 2000 United
States presidential election where many of Florida votes used
Votomatic punch card ballots. Incompletely-punched holes resulted
in partially-punched chad, where one or more corners were still
attached, a hanging chad, dimpled chad or pregnant chad - where all
corners were still attached, but an indentation appears to have
been made. These votes were not counted by the tabulating machines.
When a chad is not fully detached from the ballot it is described
byvarious terms corresponding to the level of indentation. The
following
terms generally apply when describing a four-cornered
chad:
- Hanging chad are attached to the ballot at only one
corner.
- Swinging chad are attached to the ballot at two corners.
- Tri-chad are attached to the ballot at three corners.
- Pregnant or dimpled chad are attached to the ballot at all four
corners, but bear an indentation indicating the voter may have
intended to mark the ballot. (Sometimes pregnant is used to
indicate a greater mark than dimpled.)
Chadd refers to a formally un-employed neophyte
cacher who in a few short months managed to place over 349 caches
and find over 1100, truly a testament to his determination and of a
rotten economy.
The United States presidential election of 2000 was a contest
between Republican candidate George W. Bush, then-governor of Texas
and son of former president George H. W. Bush (1989–1993),
and Democratic candidate Al Gore, then-Vice President. Bill
Clinton, the incumbent President, was vacating the position after
serving the maximum two terms allowed by the Twenty-second
Amendment. Bush narrowly won the November 7 election, with 271
electoral votes to Gore's 266 (with one elector abstaining in the
official tally). The election was noteworthy for a controversy over
the awarding of Florida's
25 electoral votes, the subsequent recount process in that state,
andthe unusual event of the winning candidate having received
fewer
popular votes than the runner-up.It was the closest election since
1876 and only the fourth election in which the electoral vote did
not reflect the popular vote.
As the incumbent Vice President, Al Gore of Tennessee was a
consistent front-runner for the Democratic nomination, with his
only serious challenge coming from former Senator Bill Bradley of
New Jersey. Other prominent Democrats mentioned as possible
contenders included Nebraska Senator Bob KerreyMissouri Congressman
Dick Gephardt, Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone, and famous actor
and director Warren Beatty, who declined to run.Of these, only
Wellstone formed an exploratory committee.
In addition to Gore's advantage as the incumbent Vice
President,Bradley was not the candidate of a major faction or
coalition of blocs.
Running an insurgency campaign, Bradley positioned himself as
thealternative to Gore, who was a founding member of the centrist
Democratic Leadership Council. While former basketball star Michael
Jordan campaigned for him in the early primary states, Bradley
announced his
intention to campaign "in a different way" by conducting a positive
campaign of "big ideas". The focus of his campaign was a plan to
spend
the record-breaking budget surplus on a variety of social welfare
programs to help the poor and the middle-class, along with
campaign
finance reform and gun control. Gore easily defeated Bradley in the
primaries, largely because of support from the Democratic Party
establishment and Bradley's poor showing in the Iowa caucus, where
Gore successfully painted Bradley asaloof and indifferent to the
plight of farmers. The closest Bradley
came to a victory was his 50–46 loss to Gore in the New
Hampshire primary. On March 14, Al Gore won the Democratic
nomination.
None of Bradley's delegates were allowed to vote for him, so Gore
won the nomination unanimously at the Democratic National
Convention. Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman was nominated for
Vice President by voice vote. Lieberman became the first Jewish
American ever to be chosen for this position by a major party. Gore
chose Lieberman over five finalists. Delegate Totals Democratic
National Convention Tally.
Several Republican candidates appeared on the national scene to
challenge Gore's candidacy.
George W. Bush became the early front-runner, acquiring
unprecedented funding and a broad base of leadership support based
on his governorship of Texas and the name recognition and
connections of the Bush family. Several aspirants withdrew before
the Iowa Caucus because they were unable to secure funding and
endorsements sufficient to remain competitive with Bush. These
included Elizabeth Dole, Dan Quayle, Lamar Alexander, and Robert C.
Smith. Pat Buchanan dropped out to run for the Reform Party
nomination. That left Bush, John McCain, Alan Keyes, Steve Forbes,
Gary Bauer, and Orrin Hatch as the only candidates still in the
race.
On January 24, Bush won the Iowa caucus with 41% of the vote.
Forbescame in second with 30% of the vote. Keyes received 14%,
Bauer 9%,
McCain 5%, and Hatch 1%. Hatch dropped out. On the national stage,
Bush was portrayed in the media as the establishment candidate.
McCain, with
the support of many moderate Republicans and Independents,
portrayed himself as a crusading insurgent who focused on campaign
reform.
On February 1, McCain won a 49%–30% victory over Bush in the
New Hampshire primary. Gary Bauer dropped out. After coming in
third in Delaware Forbes dropped out, leaving three candidates. In
the South Carolina primary, Bush soundly defeated McCain. Some
credit Bush's win to the fact that
it was the first major closed primary in 2000, which negated
McCain's strong advantage among independents. Some McCain
supporters blamed it
on the Bush campaign, accusing them of mudslinging and dirty
tricks, such as push polling that implied that McCain's adopted
Bangladeshi-born daughter was an African-American child he fathered
out of wedlock.[6] While McCain's loss in South Carolina damaged
his campaign, he won both Michigan and his home state of Arizona on
February 22.
On February 24, McCain criticized Bush for accepting the
endorsement of Bob Jones University despite its policy banning
interracial dating. On February 28 McCain also referred to Rev.
Jerry Falwell and televangelist Pat Robertson as "agents of
intolerance", a term he would later distance himself from during
his 2008 bid for the party's nomination. He lost the state of
Virginia to Bush on February 29. On Super Tuesday, March 7, Bush
won New York, Ohio, Georgia, Missouri, California, Maryland, and
Maine. McCain won Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut, and
Massachusetts, but dropped out of the race. On March 10, Alan Keyes
got 21% of the vote in Utah. Bush took the majority of the
remaining contests and won the Republican nomination on March 14,
winning his home state of Texas and his brother Jeb's home state of
Florida among others. At the Republican National Convention in
Philadelphia George W. Bush accepted the Nomination of the
Republican party.
Delegate Totals
- Governor George W. Bush 1526
- Senator John McCain 275
- Ambassador Dr. Alan Keyes 23
- Businessman Steve Forbes 10
- Gary Bauer 2
- None of the Names Shown 2
- Uncommitted 1
Governor Bush told former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney to
head up a commission to help select a running mate for him,
but
ultimately, Bush decided that Cheney should be the Vice
Presidential
nominee. While the U.S. Constitution does not specifically disallow
a
president and a vice-president from the same state, it does
prohibit each elector from casting both of his or her votes for
persons
from his or her own state. Accordingly, Cheney—who had been a
resident
of Texas for nearly 10 years—changed his voting registration
back to Wyoming.
Had Cheney not done this, either he or Governor Bush would
have
forfeited their electoral votes from the Texas electors, a
situation
which—given the eventual razor-thin margin of victory for
the
Republicans that year—could have resulted in a
Democratic
Vice-President serving under a Republican President.
With the exceptions of Florida and Tennessee, Bush carried the
Southern states by comfortable margins and also secured wins in
Ohio, Indiana, most of the rural Midwestern farming states, most of
the Rocky Mountain states, and Alaska. Gore balanced Bush by
sweeping the Northeastern United States (with the sole exception of
New Hampshire, which Bush won narrowly), most of the Upper Midwest,
and all of the Pacific Coast states of Washington, Oregon, and
California, and carried Hawaii, as well. As the night wore on, the
returns in a handful of small-to-medium sized states, including
Wisconsin and Iowa, were extremely close; however it was the state
of Florida that would make clear the winner of the election. As the
final national results
were tallied the following morning, Bush had clearly won a total of
246 electoral votes, while Gore had won 255 votes. 270 votes were
needed to
win. Two smaller states - New Mexico (5 electoral votes) and Oregon
(7 electoral votes) - were still too close to call. It was Florida
(25 electoral votes), however, that the news media focused their
attention on. Mathematically, Florida's 25 electoral votes became
the key to an election win for either candidate. Although both New
Mexico and Oregon were declared in favor of Gore over the nextfew
days, Florida's statewide vote took center stage because that
state's winner would ultimately win the election. The outcome of
the election was not known for more than a month after the
balloting ended
because of the extended process of counting and then recounting
Florida's presidential ballots.
Florida recount
2000 Palm Beach County voting stand and ballot box At approximately
7:50 p.m. EST on election day, 10 minutes before the polls closed
in the largely Republican Florida panhandle, which is in the
Central time zone, some television news networks declared that Gore
had carried Florida's 25 electoral votes. They based this
prediction substantially on exit polls. However, in the actual vote
tally Bush began to take a wide lead early in Florida, and by 10
p.m. EST those networks had retracted that prediction and placed
Florida back into the "undecided" column. At approximately 2:30
a.m., with some 85% of the votes counted in Florida and Bush
leading Gore by more than 100,000 votes, the networks,starting with
Fox News, declared that Bush had carried Florida and
therefore had been elected President. However, most of the
remaining votes to be counted in Florida were located in three
heavily Democratic
counties - Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach - and as their votes
were reported Gore began to gain on Bush. By 4:30 a.m., after all
votes were counted, Gore had narrowed Bush's margin to just over
2,000 votes, and the networks retracted their predictions that Bush
had won Florida and the presidency. Gore, who had privately
conceded the election to Bush, withdrew his concession. The final
result in Florida was slim enough to require a mandatory recount
(by machine) under state law; Bush's lead had dwindled to about 300
votes by the time it was completed later that week. A count of
overseas military ballots later boosted his margin to about 900
votes.
Most of the post-electoral controversy revolved around Gore's
request for hand recounts in four counties (Broward, Miami Dade,
Palm Beach, and Volusia), as provided under Florida state law.
Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris announced she would
reject any revised totals from those counties if they were not
turned in by November 14, the statutory deadline for amended
returns. The Florida Supreme Court extended the deadline to
November 26, a decision later vacated by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Miami-Dade eventually halted its recount and resubmitted its
original total to the state canvassing board, while Palm Beach
County failed to meet the extended deadline. On November 26, the
state canvassing board certified Bush the winner of Florida's
electors by 537 votes. Gore formally contested the certified
results, but a state court decisionoverruling Gore was reversed by
the Florida Supreme Court, which
ordered a recount of over 70,000 ballots previously rejected by
machine counters. The U.S. Supreme Court quickly halted the order.
On December 12, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5–4 vote that
the Florida Supreme Court's ruling requiring a statewide recount of
ballots was unconstitutional, and that the Florida
recounts could not be completed before a December 12 "safe harbor"
deadline, and should therefore cease and the previously certified
total should hold. The Supreme Court's decision was an unsigned or
"Per Curiam" ruling; the ruling was “limited to the present
circumstances” and could not be cited as precedent.