> The results: The two major conclusions here are that Gore likely would have won a hand recount of the statewide overvotes and undervotes – which he never requested – while Bush likely would have won the hand recount of undervotes ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, although by a smaller margin than the certified 537 vote difference.

Counting over votes would have been utterly ridiculous. It would have election officials try to divine who someone intended to vote for where they punched holes for more than one candidate.

Gore’s whole recount strategy was Bayesian bullshit. Back then, 1-2% of all votes on these punchcard machines were uncountable. Hand recounts will turn up a bunch more votes, creating a poll of votes that can skew them to your advantage through selective recounts that take advantage of different base rates (favoring Bush or Gore) in different precincts. Gore’s original gambit was to request a recount only in counties that had heavily favored him to begin with. Obviously that would result in newly countable votes skewing in his favor at the base rate of the county. But even he never asked for a recount of over votes.

The whole 2000 recount was a shocking parade of innumeracy. The Florida precincts were doing things like including partial recounts in the results. We know from the 2020 election why this would be nutty. Imagine Georgia starting a statewide hand recount, stopping halfway through because they ran out of time, and updating the results with partial data that excluded a bunch of absentee votes, or Fulton county.