A series of court cases ensued over the legality of county-specific and statewide recounts. After machine and manual recounts in four counties, and with Bush still prevailing, the Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide manual recount of all counties. The U.S. Supreme Court, upon appeal from the Bush campaign (Bush v. Gore), overturned the decision and halted all recounts. After the ruling, Gore reinstated his concession. Several months later the statewide manual recount of all counties was completed by a group of newspapers and it was determined that Al Gore had won in Florida under four counting standards and had lost to Bush under the other four counting standards. [20][21] Since the Florida Supreme Court did not precisely define the ballot counting standard to be used in the statewide manual recount of all counties, it remains disputed who would have won the state if the manual recount had not been halted by the U.S. Supreme Court. In the final official count, Bush had won Florida by only 537 votes (2,912,790 for Bush to 2,912,253 for Gore) [22], earning the needed 25 electoral votes and the presidency.
