The 2000 presidential election was the most controversial U.S. election
in recent history, mainly due to the disputed outcome of the election in
Florida. Elsewhere in this issue, Richard Smith analyzes the high vote
for Pat Buchanan in Palm Beach county. As background for his article, we
summarize this and other voting-related issues that may have affected
the outcome of the election in Florida, such as the undervote in
counties that used a punch-card ballot and the overvote in counties that
used multicolumn and multipage ballots.