How Pennsylvania Might Have Handled A Razor-Thin Presidential Election Outcome.
Originally published in The Pennsylvania Lawyer (March-April 2001)
No right is more precious in a free country than that of having a voice in the election of those who make the laws under which, as good citizens, we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined.
— Justice Hugo L. Black, Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1, 17 (1964).
Pennsylvania’s actual popular vote margin for the Gore-Lieberman ticket was more than 200,000 votes, as reported in the morning newspapers of Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2000. What if the margin in Pennsylvania had instead been a virtual tie — a narrow 1,210 votes — as was actually announced that morning for the Bush-Cheney ticket in Florida? What if Pennsylvania’s 25 electoral votes would have determined the next president? Would sorting out the will of the voters have been any easier in Pennsylvania — or a great deal more difficult
