December 12th is the 10th Anniversary of Supreme Court Decision to Halt Florida Recount in 2000 Presidential Election

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Dec 07, 2010, 06:54 ET

CHICAGO, Dec. 7, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In the wake of one of the Supreme Court's most monumental decisions, NORC at the University of Chicago was hired by a well-respected group of news organizations to conduct a thorough review of more than 175,000 uncertified Florida ballots. Those organizations included: the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Associated Press, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Orlando Sentinel, and Cox News Service (for the Palm Beach Post and St Petersburg Times).

The anniversary date of December 12th is ideal for a media retrospective of this most fascinating of presidential elections and NORC will make available Kirk Wolter, the Florida Ballots project director.

Dr. Wolter can provide expert comment regarding the ballots themselves, the difficult and sometimes quirky nature of the process, the analysis of NORC data by the news organizations, and the recommendations made by NORC in light of the data. Dr. Wolter can provide many interesting observations and conclusions. For example:

Because by law only county officials were allowed to touch the ballots, NORC had to view the ballot by turning the county official's hand that held the ballot.
Ironically, it appears that each candidate's preferred recount standard would have yielded a defeat for that candidate.
In some cases, access to the ballots was only obtained by court order.

Our mission is to conduct high quality social science research in the public interest.

SOURCE NORC at the University of Chicago