MEGAN MCARDLE CORRECTS THE RECORD: No, Democrats Did Not Just Want to “Count All the Votes” in the 2000 Election. “Count all the Votes” became the rallying cry after the courts told Democrats they couldn’t just count some of the votes. “I don’t mean to suggest that Democrats are somehow specially hypocritical here; I am personally skeptical, for example, that Katherine Harris’ maneuvers to cut off vote counts were motivated by her fervent committment to administrative efficiency and strict deadline discipline. Both sides had reasonable points, and reasonable grievances. But Al Gore was running for president, not Santa. The procedure he chose–and stuck with, until a court told him to knock it off–was not fair. And by the time the case hit the Supreme Court, his supporters (and the Florida Supreme Court) had already invested a huge amount of credibility in coming up with creative reasons that it should happen anyway. Ironically, I suspect that if Gore had simply unilaterally requested a statewide manual recount, or the Florida Supreme Court had forced one upon him, the United States Supreme Court would have probably stayed out of it. But they didn’t, and as they say, the rest is history.”