Lost votes:
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SUMMARY: Voters in these counties were five times more likely to spoil their ballots with multiple marks for president than voters in counties that kept the presidential race to one column. It appears thousands of voters thought the top of the second column was a separate race and they filled it in, voiding their vote for president. Many of these same voters had no problem in other races. Who’s responsible? Supervisors in 12 of the counties, wanting to save time and money, allowed an Alabama printing company to lay out their ballots. The printer worked from a sample ballot from the state Division of Elections, which displayed the presidential candidates over two columns.

In the 15 counties with this ballot style, 4,287 people voted for Al Gore and also picked one of the candidates in the second column; 2,604 voters did the same for Bush. Presuming voters intended to select either Gore or Bush, Gore picks up 1,683 votes – enough to turn the election. The Legislature has since made the two-column practice illegal.

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