EP. 19 — RECOUNTING 2020

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Weston Wamp: I'm Weston Wamp and this is Swamp Stories brought to you by Issue One.

Almost exactly 20 years ago, what had been a relatively normal presidential election by today’s standards took a very unexpected turn. 

Judy Woodruff: A big call to make, CNN announces that we call Florida in the Al Gore column. This is a state both campaigns desperately wanted to win.

Bernard Shaw: Standy by. Stand by. CNN right now is moving our earlier declaration of Florida back to the too-close-to-call column.

Weston Wamp: The recount that followed in Florida captured the attention of the world — and many Americans got their first lesson in the electoral college, state control of elections, and election certification. 

Since then we’ve held four presidential elections without great controversy, but the 45th president’s own words have caused many of us to be concerned that November of 2020 may be rocky.

We’re about to take a look back at a suspenseful night that turned into a legal battle over hanging chads that led all the way to the Supreme Court.

And we’ll take a look at what can be learned from the peaceful transfer of power in 2000 that required the intervention of our land’s highest court, particularly as we approach what could be among the closest and most contested elections in our history.    

This is Episode 19 — “Recounting 2000”

Weston Wamp: To recount the recount, and the events that led to it, when a favorite son of my home state of Tennessee faced off against the oldest son of a former president, it felt appropriate to find someone who saw it unfold firsthand, but who wasn’t litigating on the ground for one side or the other. There are still many raw emotions for those who were involved — even two decades after the fact. I was only 13 when the eyes of the nation turned to Florida. To understand what really happened, I sought out the one American who may have had the most pressure to get the story right, both in the early morning hours of Wednesday, November 8th and in the historic legal battles that followed.

Leonard Downie Jr.: Probably it was after midnight that the networks first called it for Gore, which turned out to be a mistake. It was premature. I don't know what they based that on. I can't remember anymore what they based that on. And then later on, they called it for Bush and we are now well after two o'clock in the morning and none of the editions of The Post up until that time had called a winner because we weren't sure there was one.

But after the networks subsequently called it for Bush and it looked like Florida was going to decide the election. And Bush was still ahead in Florida. We sent down to the press room a story with Bush winning. And actually the plates were on the presses, we had several printing plants back then, but the plates were on the presses to print newspapers that would have had Bush as the winner with a big banner headline about Bush winning the election.

Weston Wamp: Leonard Downie Jr. led the Washington Post’s coverage of every national election from 1984 to 2008. For 17 years he was the executive editor of the Post during which time it won 17 Pulitzers. Mr. Downie is the Vice President at Large of the Washington Post Company to this day and he’s the Weil Professor of Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. 

Recently, Downie released a book entitled “All About the Story — News, Politics, Power, and the Washington Post — and in it he shares his vivid memories of the tall task of covering the 2000 recount.

Leonard Downie Jr.: Sometime around 2:30, our great political writer, Dan Baltz, had written alternatively, just in case we needed a different one. And sometime around 2:30, one of the political editors came to me and said, we're hearing that Gore isn't sure that Bush really is going to win the election. That there's some doubt; there may have to be a recount in Florida. So, Steve called, my brilliant managing editor at the time, picked up a piece of scrap paper. I don't think it was the back of an envelope, but it was a piece of scrap paper. And we started writing down the numbers. We wrote down the number of votes that Bush was leading in Florida which was some hundreds. And we wrote down the number of votes outstanding in Florida which was more than that still. We asked about the recount rules in Florida. And we realized that at most, at best for Bush, there would have to be a recount, even if he still stayed ahead. And he might not even stay ahead as the count continued.

So, Dan Baltz wrote a new lead saying that the election was undecided and there'd have to be a recount in Florida. I called down to the press room; the only time I ever had to do this. I'd stopped the presses on some other occasions, but I never had called down and said, "Take those plates off the press that have Bush winning. Don't print any newspapers with them. Take them off. We're going to send a new story down. There'll be new plates for the presses."

And that's what happened. So the final edition of The Post correctly said in its headline that the election was too close to call, and there'd have to be a recount in Florida.

Weston Wamp: What started as a long night led to a more than a month-long saga — the kind that we hope to avoid this year, but feels distinctly possible.

Leonard Downie Jr.: What happened next for which we were totally unprepared, as was all the news media, was this recount in Florida that wound up being so contentious. As we covered this recount over the weeks ahead, we discovered that there were voters that had been disenfranchised in various ways in Florida, which was something we had to write about. We discovered this whole problem of ballots that were hard to understand how to mark them.

And some voters clearly marked them incorrectly, not knowing that they were voting for a different candidate than they intended to. There was the whole question of these hanging chads, this kind of ballot that would have to punch holes in things to count them. And they weren't always punched all the way through, giving rise to this phrase "hanging chads," which is what many people remember from that long count.

And on top of all that, both sides had these teams of lawyers down there, all over the place, all over the counties where the votes were still being... Were being recounted and going to court to file things about the recount and generally presenting a very confusing picture to reporters and to the American people about how the recount was going. It was very chaotic and very hard to understand whether in fact voting had been fair in Florida and whether the votes were being counted accurately in Florida.

In the end, the Bush team prevailed in the Supreme Court in a controversial five to four decision along the lines of the parties that had chosen each of the justices. So, that was five appointed by Republicans, four appointed by Democrats. And decided to end the Florida recount, which itself was controversial because the Gore team felt that it still needed to be going on further.

There wasn't finished yet. And so that decided the election. And Gore conceded, even though one could understand that he would have wanted to continue fighting in some way. He decided it was best for the country that he conceded the election to George W. Bush.

Weston Wamp: What Downie and some of his colleagues in journalism did next allowed history to put much of the controversy of the 2000 recount to rest. And it reveals the kind of important role that journalists may play as the results are sorted out this fall. 

Leonard Downie Jr.: We then did something else. We had some other news organizations, two different groups of news organizations, decided to examine the recount ourselves. And so we spent a lot of money to hire an organization, and it was a called ORC that was able to hire lots of people and asked to see the ballots, which the public had access to if they wanted them, to see the ballots that were recounted and to do our own recount.

We discovered two things. One was we couldn't gain access to all the ballots that were subject to the recount, but a number of them that seem to be representative. And secondly, we discovered in that that were still questions raised about how the election was handled in Florida. But the bottom line was that after we did our recount, Bush still won by a few hundred votes. And another group of news organizations led by the Knight Ridder and the Miami Herald did the same thing.

And with a slightly different number, also showed that Bush still would have won if the recount had been done that way.

Weston Wamp: Despite the controversy — and the extreme and understandable disappointment of Democrats — Al Gore conceded and walked away. Power was peacefully transferred as it always has been in America. 

I asked Downie if he ever worried about violence or whether Bush or Gore might refuse to step aside.

Leonard Downie Jr.: Not in terms of the public. The public never seemed to get riled up over that election. The country was not as deeply divided or as angrily divided, as emotionally divided as it is now. And there were just Republicans and Democrats. Democrats wanted Gore to win. Republicans wanted Bush to win. The closest to violence actually was lawyers, where some of the recounting was going on. And I remember some group of lawyers decided they were going to like sit in or stand in, or block what was going on.

I think they were even rushing doors in some places I recall. So, violent lawyers concerned me at the time, but the general population was not as volatile and not as deeply divided as it is now.

Weston Wamp: Downie is right about that. The country is more divided than it was 20 years ago. And according to Gallup polling earlier this year, some 86% of Americans think the media is biased.

So given that the media will again serve as an important gatekeeper of information and there's that kind of distrust, I asked Downie how he would advise journalists and editors based on his own experience. 

Leonard Downie Jr.: You have to be very careful about estimating an outcome that you're not absolutely sure of, as we did on that night in 2000. I should point out, by the way, that a number of other newspapers around the country, a significant number, not all but nearly, did have the wrong headline at the end of that night, did have Bush winning the election on the day after the election when he had not yet won it.

So you want to avoid being put in that position. And I think the example of 2000 and all the anticipation and preparation for this one, I doubt we're going to have those kinds of mistakes. Instead, I think, as I said earlier, I think what's really important for those editors and those news directors around the country is to do the reporting; do the reporting on the ground.

To examine is the voting going right? Is the voting fair? Is the counting going right? Is the counting fair? Are there differences amongst neighborhoods? Are there more problems in some neighborhoods than in other ones? Does that appear to favor one party over another? To get out to polling places, what's going on with the voters? If there are long lines when polling places close, how's that being handled?

You have lawyers that are in court pushing one thing or another. You've got to cover that. There are interest groups now who closely watch themselves the voting going on around the country, like the Brennan Center, for instance, in New York. You should be in touch with them because they will be also monitoring. They're a source of information and they're non-partisan. So, covering the voting and covering the counting is what's going to be important to do this time around.

Weston Wamp: Near the end of our conversation, I asked Downie whether he thought that bias has in fact increased among the national newspapers of record. In his answer, he revealed the lengths to which he went to stay neutral.

Leonard Downie Jr.: No, I don't think so, but we were accused of it back then, too. Obviously we were working on Watergate; I was one of the editors in the Watergate story. The president of United States was accusing us of bias. He was attacking us. He was attacking Ben Bradlee, my boss then, by name. Vicious attacks. And half the country supported him and didn't believe our reporting until the very end, until the Senate Watergate hearings and the impeachment changed many people's minds, not all people's minds.

I would always answer people when they accused The Post of being biased when we were doing reporting or investigative reporting with which they disagreed, I would tell those people that, first of all, we're not biased. I stopped voting all during the time that I was managing editor, executive editor of the post for 24 years, because I was the final gatekeeper for what went into the newspaper.

And I did not want to make up my mind who should be president or mayor or anything else. I keep a completely open mind. I made that public. I was often criticized and made fun of about that, but I think it was very important that I kept a completely open mind. And I could tell people who were concerned about our reporting, that that was the case. So, accusations of bias are not new. What's new now is that there is bias in some parts of the media, not the national media that you spoke of, what I would consider the national fact-finding media, as opposed to some national media that are more interested in opinion and facts and are biased.

Weston Wamp: Leonard Downie Jr. was a force in American journalism. We would likely all be served well if  journalists cover this election with the same integrity that Downie brought to the 2000 election.

As for the 2020 election, there’s been a lot of talk in the media about how close it’s going to be, about how contested it will be, and all the things both sides are going to do. But for our part as members of the public and patriotic Americans, it’s our job to be patient and peaceful and let the process unfold — no matter how crazy things get.

On the next Episode of Swamp Stories we’ll introduce you to the National Council on Election Integrity — a bipartisan group of over 40 prominent Americans working to ensure a peaceful election process this year.

Thanks for listening to Swamp Stories, presented by Issue One, the country's leading political reform organization that unites Republicans, Democrats, and independents to fix our broken political system.

Please subscribe to the podcast and share it with your friends. Even better, rate and review it on iTunes to help us reach more listeners. You can find out more at swampstories.org. I'm your host, Weston Wamp.

A special thank you to executive producer Ethan Rome, producers Evan Ottenfeld and Sydney Richards, and editor Parker Tant from parkerpodcasting.com. Swamp Stories was recorded in Tennessee, edited in Texas, and can be found wherever you listen to podcasts.

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