After a machine recount, Bush's margin in Florida was reduced to several hundred votes, with Democrats complaining that a punch-card ballot used in some communities was confusing, depriving Gore of thousands of votes; worse, the machines routinely failed to count incompletely punched ballots, Gore's lawyers demanded that the ballots in several predominantly Democratic counties be counted by hand. In some counties hand recounts were initiated, with examiners holding ballots up to the light to determine whether the chad—the "hole in the punch card"—had been sufficiently imprinted to constitute a vote. Republicans countered that Democrats had no right to change voting procedures after the election. They demanded that the hand recounts cease.
Yet when overseas absentee ballots began pouring in, many of them from military personnel, Republicans demanded that technical rules, such as those requiring that ballots be postmarked on or before the election, be waived. Gore objected. The entire election ended up in the courts. On December 12, more than a month after the election, the Supreme Court ruled by a 5 to 4 vote that the selective hand recounts violated the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection. Bush's margin would stand.