Twenty-five years ago, politics in the United States took a significant and drastic shift. The Presidential election was not decided on election day, but instead turned into a multi-week drama that played out in courtrooms around the country. For 36 days, most of the eyes of the world focused on the decisions made in Tallahassee, Florida where state officials, the Florida Supreme Court, and campaigns of George W. Bush and Al Gore battled over the number of ballots cast and which votes counted.
36 Days in Tallahassee is a review of events surrounding the 2000 Presidential Election recount, through the eyes and memories of people who were stuck in the immediate terrain around Florida’s Capitol during that event.
Looking back at history
The average Tallahassean would have been completely unaware of the congested throng of journalists, videographers, and photographers unless they had to traverse the few blocks between the Leon County Courthouse, Capitol Complex and the State Supreme Court. But the people documenting the recount may as well have been living on an island. They were stuck in a bubble. That is what this half-hour documentary is about, the timeline of unfolding events from the viewers in the bubble.
On the lighter side...
In the midst of the national and local chaos, there were a few lighter and more unusual moments associated with those 36 days in Tallahassee that are not in the documentary. Like that what happened on the 10th day of the recount when word came that Capitol Police had arrested Fox News reporter Shepard Smith after a dispute with a competing reporter. On November 18, 2000, The Tampa Bay Times reported, “Capitol Police on Friday arrested Fox News Channel anchor Shepard Smith, one of hundreds of journalists in town to cover the election drama, after police said Smith struck another reporter with his car during an argument over a parking space. The reporter, Maureen Walsh of Tallahassee, is a freelance journalist who works for Bay News 9, a cable news channel based in Pinellas Park.” Charges were later dropped. Before working for Fox News, Smith had lived in Florida and worked at television stations in Panama City, Gainesville, Fort Meyers, Miami and Orlando.
This is important! This is Football!
On the 11th day of the recount, as the world watched and waited for the next leader of the free world to be decided, something else really important was about to happen in Tallahassee. On November 18th, the #4 Florida Gators would play the #3 FSU Seminoles on the gridiron in Tallahassee. Hotel rooms had been reserved months in advance by out-of-town football fans. That weekend found many displaced journalists scrambling for a place to sleep. The Seminoles won the game 30-7.
Look! Up in the sky!
Local photographer Mickey Adair, known for his portrait work, had a studio downtown, about a block north of where most of the recount hubbub was taking place. Although not a journalist, the ongoing recount spectacle had caught the photographer’s eye. Adair came up with a plan for a one-of-a-kind photograph. On the eighteenth day of the recount, he took to the sky to capture a perspective of the media crush, nobody else had shown. From high above Tallahassee, you can see the main locations involved: the Florida Supreme Court, the Capitol building, and the many, many, many Satellite trucks that encircled the area. Mickey Adair talks about it here and shows us his photo.
Lessons learned
To this day it remains unknown how close the election result really was, because the recount was interrupted and stopped. The contested result was “the combination of bad laws, poor training of election officials, no training of the canvassing board…led to a host of problems,” said Ion Sancho, former Leon County Supervisor of Elections and Florida Supreme Court appointed recount advisor. He went on to explain how problems dealing with under-votes, over-votes, and the lack of canvassing board education, undermined the results. “Florida is the only state in U.S. history ever not to complete an actual election recount in a presidential election, and we remain such today," he said.
Today, Florida provides extensive training for election supervisors and staff. If you want to learn more about how the State Canvassing Commission and County Canvassing Commission work, check out these websites.
