President Obama today made a stop in his hometown of Chicago to vote — early, making him the first sitting president to do so.
The Obama campaign also released an new ad reminding America that in 2000 we didn’t know who would be president for almost two months, because the election came down to 537 votes in Florida.
The 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore “was noteworthy for a controversy over the awarding of Florida’s 25 electoral votes, the subsequent recount process in that state, and the unusual event of the winning candidate having received fewer popular votes than the runner-up,” Wikipedia notes:
This marked only the fourth election in U.S. History in which the eventual winner failed to win a plurality of the popular vote (after the elections of 1824, 1876, and 1888). Later research showed that by the standards requested by the Gore campaign in their contest brief and set by the Florida Supreme Court, Bush would have likely won the recount anyway. However, the same research indicates that had Gore asked for and received a statewide recount, then he might have won the statewide recount by about 100 votes, awarding him Florida’s (then) 25 electoral votes and consequently victory in the election (by a margin of 291 electoral votes to Bush’s 246).