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Why did the Florida Supreme Court order a manual recount of undervotes?

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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.

The Florida Supreme Court ordered a manual recount of undervotes—ballots that machines recorded as not clearly expressing a presidential vote—to discern voter intent in the wake of the extremely close 2000 presidential election.12

Following a mandatory machine recount that left George W. Bush with a narrow lead, legal challenges emerged regarding the accuracy of the vote tally. County officials faced difficulties interpreting ballots, including those with "hanging chads" (incompletely punched paper) and "pregnant chads" (dimpled but not pierced paper). In an effort to ensure that all legal votes were counted and to address these discrepancies, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that manual recounts of these undervotes should proceed in counties where they had not yet occurred, intending to include those results in the state's final certified count.12

The U.S. Supreme Court later reversed this order in Bush v. Gore, holding that the lack of uniform standards for the manual recount violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.13