In response to former President Donald Trump’s extraordinary and irregular attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential elections, some have asked: What about the 2000 election? Didn’t losing candidate Al Gore try to get his loss overturned?

The answer is: no, not in the same way. Gore did vigorously pursue his legal options under Florida law, which, at least at that time, allowed him to request recounts in counties where he thought the results might be favorable for him, without asking for a statewide recount. And his lawyers did succeed in persuading the Florida Supreme Court to issue rulings of which I, writing at Overlawyered, and many others were scathingly critical at the time. All are grounds for fair criticism.

But as David Nieporent (also once associated with Overlawyered) observes in a comment at Volokh Conspiracy: 

I thought Gore was too clever by half, the Florida courts made bad decisions, and SCOTUS’s ultimate ruling did the best it could to salvage a mucked up situation. But the fact is that the winner in Florida was in legitimate doubt. It was below the level of precision of the system. (Ironically, that’s why I thought the whole process that everyone was using was inherently flawed. If you recounted the whole state, Gore might well have won. But if you then recounted it again, Bush might have won! The courts would have done better to call it a tie and order a coin flip than to pretend that simply counting again would get a more accurate result.)

But Gore was not “denying” anything. He was not inventing a secret conspiracy based on fake affidavits and bad data by a guy who didn’t know what state he was discussing. He was contesting who got more votes. If Trump had simply asked for recounts in accordance with applicable state laws, nobody would’ve criticized him. (Maybe mocked him, because none of those states were remotely close enough for a recount to change the outcome.)

And as soon as the results were certified, Gore conceded. Period. End of story. He did not try bribery, extortion, or insurrection to change the outcome. He did not exercise his imaginary VP power to declare himself the winner.

Instead, on January 7, 2001, presiding over a joint session of Congress, Gore — just as Vice President Mike Pence was to do twenty years later — declared the head of the opposing ticket to be the legally elected new President. 

There is no comparison with Trump.