Since this margin was less than one-half of one percent, Florida law required an automatic machine recount.

Gore sued Florida requesting a manual recount using the “reasonable probability” standard and lost.

In fact, the election was simply too close to call.

Because Governor Bush’ s margin of victory was

The proceedings leading to the present controversy are discussed in some detail in our opinion in Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Bd., ante, p. ____ (per curiam) (Bush I). Facts In the 2000 election between Republican candidate George W. Bush and Democrat candidate Al Gore, Florida reported that Bush had won the state by 1,784 votes. The state Supreme Court held gore would have won under the correct standard and reversed. Election night 2000 was a cliffhanger that went on for weeks.

Several states were up for grabs, but in the end it came down to one: Florida, where Bush’s younger brother, Jeb, was governor. (All of the state's electors are assigned to the winning candidate.) On November 8, 2000, the day following the Presidential election, the Florida Division of Elections reported that petitioner, Governor Bush, had received 2,909,135 votes, and respondent, Vice President Gore, had received 2,907,351 votes, a margin of 1,784 for Governor Bush. The U.S. Supreme Court granted review and issued the stay on December 9.

Governor George Bush and his running mate, Richard Cheney, filed a request for review in the U.S. Supreme Court and sought an emergency petition for a stay of the Florida Supreme Court's decision.

The court was split 5-4 along ideological lines in its eagerly-awaited ruling released nearly 34 hours after hearing oral arguments from Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore…

After Bush was declared victorious by a few hundred votes, reports surfaced of widespread ballot issues questioning the overall results. Many people went to bed that night thinking that Al Gore had won, only to discover in the morning that George W. Bush had been declared the winner.

…

On November 8, 2000, the day following the Presidential election, the Florida Division of Elections reported that petitioner, Governor Bush, had received 2,909,135 votes, and respondent, Vice President Gore, had received 2,907,351 … (Bush I). The 5–4 decision effectively awarded Florida’s 25 votes in the electoral college —and thus the election itself—to Republican candidate George W. Bush. Bush v. Gore, case in which, on December 12, 2000, the Supreme Court of the United States reversed a Florida Supreme Court request for a selective manual recount of that state’s U.S. presidential election ballots.

The Florida court's 4-to-3 ruling rejected Mr. Gore, 531 U.S. C. Justice Souter, with whom Justice …