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| Florida Ballot - 2000 |
Shortly after the highly contested 2000 presidential election in Florida, Judicial Watch was the first organization to use the state’s Public Records Act to request access to actual ballots cast in the election. Numerous media organizations, including The New York Times, followed suit, but it was Judicial Watch that first conceived of and carried out the idea of using the law to examine the now infamous "hanging chads," "dimpled chads," and other ballot irregularities.
When the ballots were sent to Tallahassee for the trial of Bush v. Gore, Judicial Watch was given official "observer" status and enjoyed a front row seat at the historic trial. Afterwards, it conducted its own forensic accounting of a randomly selected sample of ballots cast in key counties. The results of the analysis further confirmed the official outcome.