How so? The vote differential from FL was clearly within the margin of error of the counting methods, but that only suggests the possibility of a counting error, not a steal.
> About 19,000 ballots were spoiled because of overvotes (two votes in the same race), compared to 3000 in 1996.[18]:215–221 According to a 2001 study in the American Political Science Review, the voting errors caused by the butterfly ballot cost Gore the election: "Had PBC used a ballot format in the presidential race that did not lead to systematic biased voting errors, our findings suggest that, other things equal, Al Gore would have won a majority of the officially certified votes in Florida."
And yet the protests then were level-headed, largely peaceful, and fully justifiable.
Are you suggesting that the design was made with the intention to take votes from Gore? Because that would be necessary to call it a "stolen" election. I acknowledge the possibility that the outcome was in error.
I'm not saying it was explicitly intentional but it isn't believable nobody on the election commission was aware of the alignment issues from previous elections. It is either straight up incompetence or willful neglect. Either way, the will of the people wasn't acted upon.
Doesn't need to be intentional, the fact that when the mistake was shown after the fact, the best they could do is invalidate tens of thousands of votes, which very likely were for one candidate, shows how the win was stolen from him.
This argument only works if you ignore the voters who were improperly purged from the voter rolls for having the same or similar names as convicted felons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia...
> About 19,000 ballots were spoiled because of overvotes (two votes in the same race), compared to 3000 in 1996.[18]:215–221 According to a 2001 study in the American Political Science Review, the voting errors caused by the butterfly ballot cost Gore the election: "Had PBC used a ballot format in the presidential race that did not lead to systematic biased voting errors, our findings suggest that, other things equal, Al Gore would have won a majority of the officially certified votes in Florida."
And yet the protests then were level-headed, largely peaceful, and fully justifiable.