Two decades ago, Florida was the political punchline of America — a state synonymous with “hanging chads,” ballot chaos, and courtroom drama. But today, it’s the model nearly every red state is trying to copy.

In the latest episode of Breaking Battlegrounds, host Sam Stone welcomes guest host Seth Leibsohn and Bob McClure, President and CEO of the James Madison Institute, to unpack how Florida turned a national embarrassment into a benchmark for election integrity and efficiency.

McClure, first appointed to Florida’s Elections Commission by then-Governor Jeb Bush in the wake of the Bush v. Gore crisis, recounts what it was like to be in the eye of the storm during the 2000 presidential election — a moment that forever changed how America thought about voting. “It was utter and complete chaos,” he recalls. “The technology was outdated, the ballots were confusing, and the system relied on the human eye and hand to decide elections.”

From the infamous butterfly ballots that misled voters to the manual recounts that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, the episode digs into the disaster that forced Florida to rebuild its entire election infrastructure. What followed was two decades of reform: streamlined ballot design, uniform technology, rigorous voter roll maintenance, and secure mail-in systems that today allow the state to count votes efficiently and release results on time — often before midnight on Election Day.

As McClure explains, “Twenty years ago, no one wanted to be compared to Florida. Now, every state says, ‘We’re trying to do what Florida did.’”

The conversation goes beyond recounts and reforms — it’s about how leadership, accountability, and smart policy turned one of America’s biggest political crises into a blueprint for election confidence.

Florida’s story isn’t just a look back at 2000 — it’s a roadmap for every state still struggling to balance access, accuracy, and trust at the ballot box.

Transcript

**Sam Stone: **Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Sam Stone. Chuck Warren out of studio today, so as has happened once before and making his triumphant return, Seth Leibson, my very good friend and the host of the Seth Leibson show is on every afternoon here in Arizona. You need to be tuning into that 990 AM. KKNT, it’s, I think, one of the smartest shows on television.

And as a program that loves smart people, our first guest up today fits that bill 100%. Bob McClure, president and CEO of the James Madison Institute, a leading public policy organization out of Florida, focuses on economic freedom and opportunity for all Floridians. And we’re talking today about an issue that I think a lot of people around this country care about. A lot of Republicans, a lot of legislatures are dealing with really every day right now.

And that is elections overall. But in every state I talked to, Bob, what I’m what we’re told is, we’re trying to do something like Florida. Twenty years ago, that would have been an unheard of statement in local government across this country. But today it is the refrain in virtually every red state you talk to. I want to go back a little bit because you were first appointed by I believe it was Jeb Bush, correct?

**Bob McClure: **Yes.

**Sam Stone: **So you were pointed by Jeb Bush to the the Florida elections commission. That was right after the whole gush Bush v. Gore the hanging chads So give folks who may have forgotten about that a little a little background on what got you into this space in the first place.

**Bob McClure: **Well, and thank you for having me. Really appreciate you guys having me on today. You know, people forget that, you know, 2000 was a complete disaster, not only for our own state, but for the country as a whole. As the great Tim Russert said back in the day, Florida, Florida, Florida, that’s what it comes down to. And it hung in the balance in terms of whether it’s going to be George Bush or Al Gore.

You know, back then Florida did not have in place the reforms that we have now. It was utter and complete chaos, particularly in the three largest counties in the state by population, Miami-Dade County, is obviously Miami, Broward County, which would be Fort Lauderdale, and Palm Beach County, which would be Palm Beach. For those of your listeners and your viewers, that’s the southeast coast on the Atlantic Ocean.

Those three counties and in those counties, probably back then, five million people, probably a third of the, almost a third of the state’s population. And so it was a complete disaster. It was a disaster for our state. And, you know, it came down to Supreme courts, both in the state of Florida and at the United States level, making decisions to stop and start counts. And ultimately George Bush was the winner.

**Sam Stone: **Give us an overview of what Florida’s voting system looked like at that time, if you can.

**Bob McClure: **Well, it was interesting. The technology obviously was not nearly what it is today. There was no mail-in voting. We have mail-in voting, which we can talk about at a different point. The ballots were far more complicated and harder to understand. If you remember, there was this big discussion about a large group of voters voted for I think it was Pat Buchanan was the third party candidate.

And whether or not they meant to vote for Al Gore. And that was part of the larger discussion. The ballots were complicated. There was no electronic tabulation in the way there is today, which I would love to get into at some point. Kind of the early voting. There was nothing like what we have today. It’s very structured. It’s pre-canvassed.

Voter rolls. We kind of took voter rolls as they were. Now cleaning up the voter rolls is a really important component of if you want to get elections correct in one’s own state, you have to clean up the voter rolls. People didn’t really think about that very much back then. And then as I said, there was no vote by mail. it was really, or very little of it, I guess I should say.

So it was really, very different dynamic. Today it’s much more technologically driven, but it’s also got tremendous numbers of safeguards in place. Back then in 2000, there was such a reliance on the human eye and the human hand to tabulate, to look at hanging chads and those kinds of things. Today it’s much more automated, but in the best way with a lot of safeguards in place.

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