Bush Country, 2000

In just over the hundred years that had passed after the 1876 contested election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden, there wasn’t really any other contested elections that could match that scale, that is, until the turn of the twenty-first century. 

 

The election of 2000 is one that most people remember as an incredibly close race between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore. There were concessions made, taken back, and ballots recounted, leaving the overall general American public just really confused as to who had emerged victorious in the 2000 presidential election. 

What added to this confusion was the people putting out the information to the American people: the news. While Americans waited with bated breath to hear what the remaining state Florida’s votes look like, one news source broke the story that Bush had won. 

Other news channels followed suit, only to ultimately take this back because Florida ended up being too close to call. Since news channels had being using different systems to count the votes, their information was contradictory. So where does that leave us in 2024 with already partisan and conflicting news sources? 

In the 2024 election between President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, there have already been tensions over news media. When determining what news network the second presidential debate should be on, Trump argued that he would not participate unless the debate was held on Fox News. 

Parties aren’t just splitting people apart anymore, they’re splitting the news we receive as well. News audiences have to comb through the information they receive, weeding out the ‘fake’ from the real.

With media contesting elections like we saw the 2000 election, how will we know what to believe in the predictably contested 2024 presidential election? Further, having gone over a hundred years without a contested election, does evolving and ever-present media mean we have to prepare for contested elections to become the norm for American democracy?