In 2000, George Walker Bush was elected to be the 43rd President of the United States, beating his Democratic opponent, Al Gore. Bush won the electoral vote while Gore won the popular vote, in a fashion one might call Trumpian today. This election was one of the most contested elections in US history, and for good reason. As I said earlier, Bush won the electoral vote, and this is a key factor when thinking about this election, as some people still think he might not have actually won even the electoral vote. In the state of Florida, the results were too close to call on election night, which lead to an automatic recount, a fairly banal situation all things considered. Where it loses all sense of banality, however, is when a controversy over various voting irregularities, including the nightmarish “hanging chads” on punch-card ballots, erupted which made it difficult to determine voter intent. Florida kept going back and forth on who had won the election with recount process that dragged on, and legal battles reaching the U.S. Supreme Court. That legal battle, intuitively named Bush v. Gore, had the Supreme Court rule over whether there should be a recount, which would question Bush’s victory. They infamously ruled to stop the recount, subsequently giving Bush Florida’s electoral votes.

The Supreme Court, on that day, might, and might is important here, have led to the election of the minority choice. That is detrimental when thinking of the protection of democracy. Even more interestingly, the decision said: “None are more conscious of the vital limits on judicial authority than are the Members of this Court, and none stand more in admiration of the Constitution’s design to leave the selection of the President to the people, through their legislatures, and to the political sphere. When contending parties invoke the process of the courts, however, it becomes our unsought responsibility to resolve the federal and constitutional issues the judicial system has been forced to confront”, themselves admitting to the importance of giving the Presidential nomination choice to the people, while simultaneously not allowing there to be a recount in case of doubt, in a razor-thin margin election.

This is fascinating, and terrifying, to think of considering the upcoming election, which will, undoubtably, be contested. Today’s court has also been criticized for exhibiting a less neutral and more politically driven decision-making tactics. Today, the Court has six republican judges and three democratic judges, which means that they might be swayed to make decisions based on party alliance, and with a clear majority in place, can we be sure they will be objective and simply stick to the laws of the Constitution? 2024 will, without a doubt, present many lawsuits which will end up in the hands of the “big” court. How, as an unelected body, can they end up being the subjective deciders for who is to be the next leader of this country?