The reason everybody forgot that fact is that it is not true. Sec. Of State Katherine Harris was a republican and cerified the vote as a win for Bush.
You are right about Harris of course.. Sorry for the memory lapse. But then the matter was referred to the Florida Supreme Court which was largely Democrat.
The recount was skewed in favor of the Democrat vote, and the Supreme Court of the United States stayed the recount.
The dems wanted to count Gorps hanging chads but not Bush’s
or as reported in Wkipedia:
[SCOTUS stayed the recount.........citing differing vote-counting standards from county to county and the lack of a single judicial officer to oversee the recount.]
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Florida Supreme Court appeals
Main articles: Palm Beach County Canvassing Board v. Harris (Harris I) and Gore v. Harris (Harris II)
Florida Supreme Court spokesman Craig Waters
The trial of Palm Beach Canvassing Board v. Katherine Harris was a response from the Bush campaign to state litigation against extending the statutory deadlines for the manual recounts. Besides deadlines, also in dispute were the criteria that each county’s canvassing board would use in examining the overvotes and/or undervotes. Numerous local court rulings went both ways, some ordering recounts because the vote was so close and others declaring that a selective manual recount in a few heavily Democratic counties would be unfair.
Eventually, the Gore campaign appealed to the Florida Supreme Court, which ordered the recount to proceed. The Bush campaign subsequently appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, which took up the case Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board on December 1. On December 4, the U.S. Supreme Court returned this matter to the Florida Supreme Court with an order vacating its earlier decision. In its opinion, the Supreme Court cited several areas where the Florida Supreme Court had violated both the federal and Florida constitutions. The Court further held that it had “considerable uncertainty” as to the reasons given by the Florida Supreme Court for its decision. The Florida Supreme Court clarified its ruling on this matter while the United States Supreme Court was deliberating Bush v. Gore.
At 4:00 p.m. EST on December 8, the Florida Supreme Court, by a 4 to 3 vote, ordered a manual recount, under the supervision of the Leon County Circuit Court and Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho, of disputed ballots in all Florida counties and the portion of Miami-Dade county in which such a recount was not already complete. That decision was announced on live worldwide television by the Florida Supreme Court’s spokesman Craig Waters, the Court’s public information officer. The Court further ordered that only undervotes be considered. The results of this tally were to be added to the November 14 tally.
U.S. Supreme Court proceedings
Main article: Bush v. Gore
The recount was in progress on December 9 when the United States Supreme Court, by a 5 to 4 vote (Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer dissenting), granted Bush’s emergency plea for a stay of the Florida Supreme Court recount ruling, stopping the incomplete recount.
About 10 p.m. EST on December 12, the United States Supreme Court handed down its ruling to stop the recount. Seven of the nine justices saw constitutional problems with the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution in the Florida Supreme Court’s plan for recounting ballots, citing differing vote-counting standards from county to county and the lack of a single judicial officer to oversee the recount. Five justices held there was insufficient time to impose a unified standard and that the recounts should therefore be stopped and Florida be allowed to certify its vote, effectively ending the legal review of the vote count with Bush in the lead. The decision was extremely controversial due to its partisan split and the majority’s unusual instruction that its judgment in Bush v. Gore should not set precedent but should be “limited to the present circumstances”. Gore said he disagreed with the Court’s decision, but conceded the election.
Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris’s certification of the election results was thus upheld, allowing Florida’s electoral votes to be cast for Bush, making him president-elect.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_election_recount