Making It Official
The Electoral College has now done its job in this year's race for the White House.
A majority of presidential electors in the 50 states and the District of Columbia has chosen George W. Bush to be the next president of the United States.
Meeting in state capitals across the country on Monday, the 538 electors have been casting their votes to pick the next president as outlined under the Consitution. Usually, these electors in effect ratify the national popular vote winner. But this year, the gatherings were more noteworthy following Bush's razor-thin victory.
Bush won 271 electoral votes, just one more than needed to become president, when Nevada cast its four votes in his favor. Democrat Gore should have won 267 votes but one elector in the District of Columbia cast a blank ballot in protest of not having representation in Congress.
In Florida, where the popular vote outcome was in dispute for weeks, all 25 electors formally cast their votes for Bush for president and Dick Cheney for vice president. The vote took place in the state capital's Senate chambers in Tallahassee with Bush's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, presiding.
"It was like finally, we did it," said Mel Martinez, a Florida elector. "It's like a close ballgame and the clock ticks and your team wins."
One Gore elector from Washington, D.C., broke her pledge by leaving her ballot blank. Barbara Lett-Simmons said it was a protest about the district's lack of representation in Congress.
"Taxation without representation is tyranny," Lett-Simmons said Monday after firing her symbolic protest shot.
All three electors in the District were supposed to support Gore, who won a majority of the votes there. But Lett-Simmons cast her ballot blank and then gave a brief speech that got a standing ovation from the group she addressed as "fellow colonists." Afterward, she said people have a right to call her a "faithless elector" but she has a right to vote her conscience.
Members of both parties had mounted campaigns to reach the electors, with Bush aides seeking out all 271 votes pledged to the GOP. Some Democrats used e-mails and telephone calls to argue that Gore deserved to be president because he won the popular vote. Republicans dismissed the effort.
"There was never any doubt," said New Hampshire elector Wayne McDonald, who was besieged with calls from reporters and voters after news reports hinted that he was thinking of backing Gore.
Some electors said they received thousands of e-mails.
"They said, `Don't vote for Bush. Vote for Gore. Think about what the American people want,'" said Arkansas elector Sarah Agee, a state representative. "And I did with all my heart and voted Bush."
Some Gore electors criticized the Electoral College system, which for the first time since 1888 allowed the loser of the popular vote to win the electoral vote and with it, the presidency. Others wee simply unhappy with the outcome.
Maryland Senate President Mike Miller remained convinced Gore would have won had the U.S. Supreme Court not halted the last recount. "We only wish that somehow those 10,000 votes in Florida had been allowed to be counted," he said.
This year's Electoral College meetings, like this year's election, were unlike any seen in recent years.
Usually the Electoral College gatherings are a rubber stamp of the popular vote. But the meetings in Indiana and Mississippi were marked by standing ovations and cheers. And the Arkansas Supreme Court chambers looked like a disco from the strobe lights of flashing news cameras.
Bush elector Beverly Gard, an Indiana state senator, stood and took a picture of her ballot after she voted. Former North Dakota Gov. Ed Schafer hesitated a moment before marking his ballot for Bush: "I thought it was a Florida ballot. I couldn't find the box."
"Your guy is B-U-S-H. Push it all the way through," GOP Gov. Bill Owens told Colorado's electors as they cast their eight votes.
In keeping with tradition, the ballots in New Hampshire were sealed with wax, placed in envelopes and carefully carried from the room. New York's ballots, cast secretly, were placed in a 16-pound mahogany box with a brass latch.
Each state's result is copied six times, with one copy each sent to the U.S. Senate and the chief judge of the federal district, and two copies each to the state's secretary of state and to the U.S. archivist in Washington.
Like the election on Nov. 7 and the turmoil that followed, this process had an occasional glitch.
Illinois's ballots had a few typographical errors, including Ralph Nader's party listed as Reform instead of the Green Party. Electors fixed it and cast their votes.
"The main parties were properly represented on the ballot," Secretary of State Jesse White said. "No one would have voted for those other individuals, anyway."
With a new CBS News poll showing that more Americans are satisfied with the outcome of the election than dissatisfied, Bush is set to meet with Gore and President Clinton on Tuesday.