Election Administration — a Tool for Political Statecraft?

Abstract

On the morning of Wednesday, 8 November 2000, the world’s attention turned to election administration. The previous day, Al Gore had conceded the US Presidential election based on media network predictions, but subsequently withdrew his concession after networks put Florida back into the ‘too close to call’ category. The initial count in Florida was won by George W. Bush but Gore requested a manual recount in the four Democrat dominated counties of Broward, Miami-Dade, Volusia and Palm-Beach, as permitted by Florida state law. There then began a series of legal contests in both state and federal courts which led to the final judgment in the Supreme Court. This effectively gave the election to Bush. During this time, global media networks, politicians, citizens and academics quickly became aware of a range of new concepts and terminology, previously only used by election anoraks, such as ‘hanging chads’, ‘butterfly-ballots’ and ‘the clear intent of the voter’ (Ceaser and Busch, 2001; Pomper, 2001). The seemingly mundane processes by which an individual could register and cast their vote, and the processes by which this vote was counted, had suddenly been elevated into an enormous international issue. Speaking in Nigeria in 2009, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, attempted to identify with her audience by referring to America’s own struggles with democracy.