There are several reasons why Al Gore “lost” the 2000 election: The corrupt Supreme Court; media failure; disenfranchisement; third party. But there’s another reason I haven’t seen, based on these facts:
- Gore “lost” Florida by 537 votes.
- Out of 23 Congressional Districts in Florida, Democrats had no candidate in seven Districts.
- There were no Democrats on the ballot in 21 state legislative districts
That’s 28 elections in which there was no Democratic candidate on the ballot.
Let’s do some math: 537 divided by 28 equals 19. If there had been candidates in each of those districts, an average of 20 votes would have made wiped out the 537 vote margin. You can get to that number with friends and family of the candidate.
Of course, a candidate would likely get much more than 20 votes. Even one Congressional or State Legislative candidate might have made the 537 vote difference. How do we know? Because in 2000, Democrats received tens of thousands of votes for Congress and the State Legislature in the reddest Florida districts.
On the other hand, our current MSNBC “star,” Morning Joe Scarborough, ran unopposed. He received 226,473 votes — 99.5%. The .5% went to write-in candidates who received 1,066 votes — or just about twice the 537 margin.
That will not happen this year on the Congressional level because Democrats have candidates for all 28 seats. The last one to file, just before the deadline, was Rock Aboujaoude, Jr. running in Florida’s Twelfth District. Without Rock’s candidacy, thousands or even tens of thousands of Democratic votes for Joe Biden for President and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell for Senate would be lost. Help Rock at his page here.
See my story on this: D's are running in every FL-CD for the 1st time since 2018. Now let's do it for the FL Legislature.
Right now we are recruiting 6 State Senate and 38 State House seats currently without a candidate. The main reason? A fee of $1,781.82 . Lots of people giving even small amounts ($5, $10, $20, $50) can get us to the goal. Great people working in Florida are leading the charge to crowd-source this amount, plus about another $1,800 to run a minimal campaign or a total of $150,000 for about 40 candidates.
Over the next few days we will be linking Act Blue pages for the candidates individually and collectively.
In the meantime, your contributions to this page will help in the effort.