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What were undervotes in the Florida recount dispute?

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U.S. presidential election of 2000 — Bush v. Gore A Florida judge examining a challenged vote at an operations center in Plantation, Florida, during a recount of the state's U.S. presidential election ballots, 2000.

In the context of the Florida recount dispute during the 2000 U.S. presidential election, undervotes were ballots that were recorded by voting machines as not containing a vote for the office of president.12

Because these ballots did not register a clear choice, they became a central focus of the legal challenges following the election. The Florida Supreme Court eventually ordered a statewide manual recount of approximately 45,000 of these undervotes to determine if the voter's intent could be discerned through other means, such as examining physical markings on the ballots. This process involved officials inspecting ballots for signs of voter intent, including "hanging chads" (incompletely punched paper ballots) and "pregnant chads" (ballots that were dimpled but not fully pierced).12

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore ultimately halted these manual recounts, concluding that the lack of consistent standards for evaluating these ballots violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.13