The chaotic and contentious 2000 election has ended, but analysis of the events and actors in the 36 days following Nov. 7 is well under way. To that end, legal experts, journalists, students, and the public gathered at Northwestern for a two-day conference, “Election 2000: The Role of the Courts, the Role of the Media, the Roll of the Dice” Jan. 11-12.

The Institute for Policy Research sponsored the conference with the Law School, the Medill School of Journalism, the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, and the Joyce Foundation.

Washington Post columnist David Broder opened the conference as the keynote speaker. Broder said U.S. citizens are questioning their system of government, and many states are replacing representative government with ballot measures, in which citizens directly vote for policy.

“This is the generation that decides whether we keep our type of government,” Broder said. National ballot measures may come next, Broder said, with the United States scrapping its representative government—bypassing the system of checks and balances for rule by simple majority.

Public confidence in government may have hit a low after the voting fiasco in Florida. On the second day of the conference, Craig Fox, associate professor of management at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and Ken Shotts, assistant professor of political science at Northwestern, discussed the voting patterns in Palm Beach County, Florida. Susan Herbst (IPR-Political Science) moderated the discussion, which also included a Justice Department representative and an election reformer.

Fox and Shotts presented statistical data that showed the poorly designed “butterfly ballot” and confusing voting instructions in Palm Beach County caused Al Gore to lose the election.

Fox estimated that Gore lost 11,000 votes because of the Buchanan mix-up, 2,000 votes because of confusing ballot instructions, and 2,000 votes because voters didn’t mark any boxes. Shotts compared the absentee ballot vote to the butterfly ballot vote in Palm Beach County. Regression analysis showed the irregularity of Buchanan’s support: He received the most support from heavily liberal parts of the county.

Craig Donsanto, director of the U.S. Justice Department’s election crimes branch, predicted that the Supreme Court will require uniform standards, most likely through new voting machines. He downplayed the idea of “e-voting,” or voting via the Internet, because of potential hackers and the public mistrust of online security.

Ronnie Dugger, founder of the Populist movement Alliance for Democracy, suggested election reforms, including holding elections over two days or over the weekend, declaring a national “election holiday” with mandatory time off work, setting nationwide opening and closing times for polls, eliminating the electoral college, and permitting same-day voter registration.

In the second panel, political science professors debated the merits of the electoral college.

David Abbott, retired from Brooklyn College, called the system “undemocratic and loaded with booby traps.” A state vote for electors is unfair, he said, because of the diverse interests and subgroups within each state. Abbott suggested a direct election with no run-offs, the system used in most gubernatorial races.

Arguing for the electoral college, Judith Best at State University of New York, Cortland, said the system forces candidates to build broad coalitions of voters. Best said the framers emphasized states’ rights and crafted the Constitution to avoid majority tyranny that would result from a nationwide popular vote. Best did advocate eliminating the actual electors, many of whom are bound by law to vote as the majority in their state.

On election night, confusion reigned both on the airwaves and in newspapers, the topic of the third panel. The headlines of the St. Petersburg Times’ four editions tell the story: 1) Photo finish; 2) Too close to call; 3) Bush wins; 4) Recount. Lucy Morgan, the paper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Tallahassee bureau chief, said she felt uneasy when the networks called Florida for Gore early in the evening. As did Beth Foughy, executive producer of CNN’s political department, but that didn’t stop the network from making the mistake, and then later that night calling the state for Bush. “We are not in the business of making bad calls on the air,” Foughy said. “It’s something we will have to live with for a long, long time.”

Marty Plissner, former political director of CBS, predicted the media would not abandon its fervor to report election-night results. “States themselves are putting up numbers on Web sites,” he said. “The information is out there, and to tell American people that the only place it’s not available is network TV is ridiculous.”

In the fourth panel, law professors and a judge squared off on legal strategy and the role of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Elizabeth Garrett at the University of Chicago Law School said the Supreme Court should have exercised judicial restraint. “The federal courts should stay out of controversies that have political ramifications... (In Bush v. Gore) you could clearly discern which party would be helped by a particular decision.”

Richard Posner, Chief Judge of the 7th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, said the court had to step in. “These judges had conflicts of interest, but so what?” he asked. “Suppose I’m right and Supreme Court intervention confers benefits on society. Should they refrain because of a conflict of interest? Would that be fair?”