The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "2000 presidential election" ...
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The Trouble with Touchscreens
"A seven month investigation of the problems- not only with touch screen voting machines, but possible causes for the paper ballot problems that plagued the U.S. Presidential election in 2000."
Tags: voting; presidential elections; elections; electronic voting
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Will Your Vote Count?
WISH-TV took a look into voting technology changes since the closely contested presidential race of 2000. In 2002, Congress passed and President Bush signed the Help America Vote Act, which, among other things, mandates updating voting equipment by 2006. The federally-funded mandate puts billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of a handful of companies that manufacture complicatd technology that few state and local election officials understand. Local election officials today are not so happy with the equipment or their vendors. And they're concerned about the integrity of future elections.
Tags: butterfly ballot; hanging chad; voting technology; Help America Vote Act; electronic voting systems
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The Long Road to Clemency
Florida bans more ex-felons from recovering their civil rights, including the right to vote, than any other state. Almost half a million people are caught up in the state's error-ridden system to restore civil rights. Since Jeb Bush took office, the system has slowed to a crawl; it could take decades to clear the backlog of cases. In Bush's six years as governor more than 200,000 applicants, many of them non-violent ex-felons, have been blocked from voting again. The issue took on particular significance in the 2000 presidential election when George W. Bush won the state of Florida by only 537 votes. Included are two follow-ups that cover prominent Florida Republicans taking the lead in asking Governor Bush to automatically grant clemency to ex-felons.
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Miscount: An Investigative Series
This series was an outgrowth of the problems that plagued Florida during the 2000 presidential election. "Scripps Howard News Service spent a year examining voting records from the 1996, 2000, 2002 and 2004 general elections, looking for and finding significant discrepancies between the number of ballots cast and the number of votes counted for major offices." This investigation helped to uncover failures in election procedures, bad ballot designs, misleading voting instructions, as well as a number of mechanical failures in ballot-counting devices.
Tags: punch - card voting; American Journalism Review; hanging chads; voting; secretary of state; presidential elections; Florida; ballots
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Newspapers' recount shows Bush prevailed in Fla. vote
USA Today, The Miami Herald, and Knight Ridder newspapers commissioned the naional accounting firm BDO Seidman to conduct a comprehensive review of over 61,000 undervote ballots which were not counted in Florida's portion of the 2000 Presidential race. The results showed that George W. Bush would have won Florida in all circumstances except if a strict standard was applied.
Tags: elections; 2000 election; Bush V. Gore; 2000 recount; chads
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Indecision 2000
WKRC-TV reports that "the real shame of America's dysfunctional electoral can be found not only in Palm Beach, but in thousands of counties nationwide." The investigation looks at the problems in Hamilton County, Ohio. The main finding is that if all ballots disqualified for double voting would have counted, Al Gore would have picked up 730 additional votes. The result is based on a methodology that assumes the percentage of the disqualified votes for Gore (from all disqualified votes) is equal to the percentage of the counted votes for Gore in the official election result for a specific precinct. The number and ratio of votes thrown out in the 2000 presidential election were much higher for African-American communities than for similar-sized white communities in Hamilton county.
Tags: TAPE; TRANSCRIPT; voting; voters; race; racial profiles; African-Americans
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Incomes, discarded votes may be linked
"Voters in Florida's poorer counties were more than twice as likely as those in a more affluent ones to have their votes for president disregarded," according to a Tallahassee Democrat analysis of the 2000 election... The correlation between discarded ballots and income was stronger than the link between the type of balloting machine used and disregarded ballots. The fact that lower-income counties are likely to have more elderly and new minority voters may also predispose those counties to have more votes disregarded. More first-time and inexperienced minority voters may have gone to the polls after a statewide get-out-the-vote campaign initiated by the state Democratic party and labor and civil rights groups. In counties using optical-scanner ballots, presidential votes were not counted 3.4 percent of the time, compared to 4.7 for those counties using punch-card ballots. However, counties using punch-card balloting had higher average incomes than those using optical-scanner balloting: $24, 849 for punch cars and $21, 464 for optical scanners."
Tags: elections; elderly voters; board of elections; error rates; income levels; presidential election 2000; Bush; Gore; discarded votes; Florida recount
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How the GOP Gamed the System in Florida
Lantigua takes a look at the disfranchisement of minority voters in Florida in the 2000 presidential election. . He writes, " disfranchisement 2000-style did not depend on intimidation...Instead Florida state election officials and hired data crunchers used computers to target thousands of voters, many of whom were then purged from the voter rolls without reason." State officials deny racist intent in their creation of laws that remove a felon's right to vote; Florida's prison population is 54 percent black while its state population is only 15 percent.. State officials also cannot explain why thousands of other Floridians who have no criminal record, also had their right to vote taken away. Lantigua investigates how legislation and election underfunding may have cost 200,000 Floridians their votes.
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Bush wins battle for legal funds
The Democrat reports that George W. Bush "nearly doubled Al Gore's money-raising during the first three weeks of Gore's legal challenge of Florida's election." Bush also raised more money than Gore in Florida, despite the state's razor-thin margin among voters. "Not only did Bush get more money, his contributions seemed to reflect a broader appeal. Almost 22,000 contributors donated an average of $216, compared with Gore's 1,258 contributors who donated an average of $1,265." Federal law does not require recount committees to report contributions, but both campaigns posted their reports on their Web sites.
Tags: 2000 presidential election; 2000 election; Florida recount; Gore; George W. Bush; post-election campaign contributions
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Influence Market: Industries that Backed Bush are now Seeking Return on Investment
In the 2000 presidential election, donors contributed $314 million to Bush campaign and the Republican National Committee, with more than 80% of which coming from corporations or individuals employed by them. The Journal investigates the new relationship between large industries and Washington, and how many industries are lobbying for policies and concessions as a return on their "investment."
Tags: Politics; campaign finance; special interest