The publishers of this website were never supporters of Al Gore for President.

The vote in Florida may well have been, in reality, "a statistical tie" — too close to call, or closer than the margin of error no matter how perfect the count.

Even if it was, however, that doesn't mean elections officials shouldn't try their best to determine which candidate got the most votes.

One official count of all ballots legally cast, with election officials discerning (within reason) the intent of the voter — which is our reading of what Florida law requires — would be, in our opinion, a far more satisfactory resolution than having the Supreme Court step in, assigning more importance to artificial deadlines and uniform standards than to allowing the best, most accurate count possible.

The newspapers' count will be flawed, of course. We'll never have all the county election boards do the work of a manual recount, so the media counts are the best we're going to get. Reporters strive for impartiality but, being human, they're as subject to error as anyone else. The county election boards are also comprised of humans. The media count will be flawed — but nowhere near as flawed as the incomplete "certified" results.

We're not pretending to present the perfect count of Florida's vote. A perfect count was rendered highly unlikely when the two parties' lawyers got involved, and absolutely impossible as soon as the first judge banged his gavel.

The Orlando Sentinel, South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Chicago Tribune are all owned by the same conglomerate, and they're sharing the expense of doing a county-by-county recount across Florida. When articles in any of those papers mention a running total, they're including only the recounts done by those three papers.

Similarly, a consortium of major media outlets including the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have started their own tally of the uncounted ballots in February. If you see a running total in either of those papers, or any of the smaller papers that are chipping in to share expenses as part of the Post/Times consortium, it won't include any counts by the Sentinel/Tribune group, above, nor counts by any other newspapers which may be conducting their own counts.

As you can see, with these and other media recounts — all done independently of one another — there's the potential for the bottom line to get messy and complicated.

In short, it's way too late for one set of definitive numbers. We get one set of numbers when election officials count the ballots; when they don't count the ballots, when election officials aren't allowed to count the ballots, when the media have to count the ballots instead, you'll get conflicting counts.

As purely an editorial choice, our preference is for the official hand count, in those counties where an official hand count was actually conducted and completed by election officials.

In counties where official hand counts were not conducted or not completed, we're going with the first mainstream media count of those otherwise uncounted ballots, so long as this count does not include dimpled or dangling chad.

If the newspaper's article provides enough information, we'll subtract dimpled and dangling chad from their totals. If the article doesn't provide enough information to know what standards were used or to allow us to disregard dimpled and dangling chad, we'll await the next media count of that county's as-yet uncounted ballots.

In all cases, we'll stay with the first media count which does not include dimpled and dangling chad.

We're open to suggestions if anyone has a better rule-of-thumb.

We're not saying this is the best or only way to decide between multiple counts of the same ballots, but it's the simplest, most straightforward way we can think of.

For future reference, it would be much simpler if the people whose job is counting ballots are allowed to count the ballots.

If it’s "unbelievable," don’t believe it. It isn’t true. All the overseas military ballots which were legally cast were counted, along with at least 115 ballots which were not legal at all. The only "funny business" involving overseas military ballots is how Republicans successfully squealed until illegal overseas military ballots were counted in spite of laws which clearly made them invalid. Republicans don't have a corner on hypocrisy and dishonesty — not by a long shot — but there’s certainly plenty to be ashamed of in how the Republicans lied about military overseas ballots, and how you’ve swallowed their lie, and repeated it.

Cynically speaking is the only way we know how to speak. The volunteers at this website are *extremely* cynical people, and on most matters we don't feel comfy with either the left or right.

If we have a bias on these counts, it's not for the "Democratic" count but for the small-d democratic count. Our bias is that legal votes should be counted.

If you want an impartial count, look to an impartial source.

If you just want propaganda, it isn't necessary to join Judicial Watch or read NewsMax to know what their positions will be. You might as well cut out the middleman and ring up the Republican Party.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but that's propaganda from the left.

As of mid-February, there's no tally by any reputable source that puts Gore "FAR ahead" in Florida.

There are "statistical projections," "expert opinions," and "theoretical analysis of voting patterns" that claim Gore should've won by tens of thousands of votes — but projections, opinions, and patterns do not become ballots.

Thousands and thousands of ballots were rejected by the machines. If one of those was my vote, or yours, we'd want to know why it was rejected.

Somebody ought to look at the ballots to see why they were rejected. And if the voter's intent is obvious, that vote ought to be counted.

"Every vote matters" and all that ... or shall we finally admit that those billboards and public service announcements urging people to vote are just a load of hooey to fool people into thinking voting makes a difference?

Clearly, humans are incapable of counting ballots. One wonders how the country muddled through any elections at all, before there were machines to tally the votes. We must assume that all elections prior to the invention of the punch card voting system were determined crookedly.

That's not the way it looked to us. We saw bipartisan teams, workers and witnesses who appeared to be doing their level best to count ballots.

Florida law says, if you're going to do a manual recount, the county canvassing board appoints counting teams comprised of a Democrat and a Republican. It's hard to believe that anyone could "manufacture votes" when ballots are being looked at by bipartisan teams.

However, since we're not including dimpled and dangling chad in the totals on this page, we're not sure what's left to complain about.

Our reading is that the newspapers are using a fairly uniform standard, but that's the opposite of our axe.

We would rather they use different standards, county by county, trying to match the standards each local election board was using or would've used. This would bring the media count as close as possible to reproducing the statewide count which was ordered stopped by the Supreme Court, in a moment of treason and hilarity, because of a sudden pretended one-time-only interest in "uniform standards," or, in Justice Scalia's words, because he thought the count might "cast a cloud upon what [Bush] claims is the legitimacy of his election."

Of course, the newspapers aren't going to count the ballots they way we would like them to, or the way you would like them to. The "original sin," we believe, was ordering the counties' election boards not to hand-count the ballots at all. We can never get back to that point in history, but the media count is the closest approximation we're ever going to get to the actual vote — surely it'll be miles closer than the scantily-clad "certified" results.

Certainly. Perfection is not an option.

Yup. That's always a danger, when humans do anything.

As with any other election, we would have been happy as heck to trust county elections boards with this responsibility — it's their job, after all — but that was ruled out.

Now, as a distant second best, we're willing to trust reporters whose public mantra is objectivity.

The only other option is trusting the incomplete "certified" results, or throwing our hands up in despair.

What's been counted twice, even thrice, are the same ballots, run through the same tabulating machines. In many Florida counties, however, not even once have those machine-rejected ballots been looked at by a human being, to see why they were rejected.

To me, especially in a close election, it seems perfectly reasonable to have responsible adults look at the rejected ballots.

Many of those ballots, we're now learning, were rejected because voters used a pen instead of a pencil, or used a black-ink pen instead of the special pen provided in certain voting booths, or for similar hypertechnical reasons.

If otherwise legal ballots can be discarded because someone used the wrong pen, then the whole mantra of "one person, one vote" is a charade.

Then it stands to reason your man has nothing to worry about. By your logic, the recounts will just add to Bush's margin of victory — right?

Let's hope not. We'd much rather have ballots counted by election officials.

Perhaps that will be allowed in the next election.

The result we're looking forward to is having the ballots counted.

In our opinion, Bush and Gore are hypocrites and whores of approximately the same gutter level, so it's almost immaterial to us which candidate ends up with the most votes after the recounts are finished. Out of curiosity, though, and a quaint reverence for the Constitution, we'd like to know whether President Bush earned his title and position, or had it handed to him.

We're not rooting for Gore. We've already said that and said that and said that, so many times only a moron could fail to understand.

We're not losing any sleep worrying about what any particular moron will or won't believe. We'd just like to know which candidate got the most votes in Florida.

It is our position now, as it was before the election, that Al Gore would make a terrible president, as would George W. Bush.

We believe Gore and Bush are each as fundamentally dishonest, corrupt to the core, and utterly devoid of ideas and ideals as the other.

However, it is important to know whether the dishonest, corrupt, and thoroughly boring candidate who won the presidency was the same dishonest, corrupt, and thoroughly boring candidate who won the election.

No disagreement here. That's what the law seems to require, if the counties are counting the ballots.

The counties are not doing the counting, of course. They were ordered not to, so the press is doing the counting.

That's not what the law requires of the press; that's what the law requires of the state and county governments.

Newspapers are counting those ballots now, because the state and counties weren't allowed to.

Yes, the newspapers' count might be more accurate if they counted every single ballot in the entire state — even ballots that are not in dispute, ballots which sailed through the counting machines with no errors, no questions asked. Unfortunately, counting ballots is an expensive procedure, because only county employees are allowed to handle the ballots, and the counties must be reimbursed for their employees' time.

That's why the newspapers are only counting disputed ballots (thousands and thousands of them), instead of each and every ballot (more than six million). Makes sense to us.

If you think they're pinchin' pennies too tightly, you could volunteer to count every ballot yourself. But we don't think it's reasonable to expect you, or a newspaper, or even a consortium of newspapers to shoulder the enormous expense of pretending to be the government.

We're not going to sneer at newspapers which spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to count the disputed ballots, and complain that they haven't spent millions of dollars to do the government's job to exact precision — when the government has itself so badly botched the job.

We'll have to settle for a little less precision than we're used to — but it'll be a lot more accurate than the incomplete "certified" results.

How could it produce the same result? Different people are doing the counting, probably using different standards. It goes without saying that a state-wide hand recount by elections officials would have been preferable, had it been allowed.

Counting the ballots wasn't allowed -- which seems an odd way to end an election.

An incomplete count has been "certified" by Katherine Harris, in her joint positions as Florida's Secretary of State and Florida's campaign manager for Bush.

This incomplete count has been muddied further by courts, lawyers, and lawsuits in every direction — a process which failed to send patriotic shivers up and down our spines.

On the other hand, we have assorted counts being conducted by media sources, using standards plainly spelled out in their accompanying articles. At this point, sadly, strangely, bizarrely, we're more comfortable with the media count than the official count.

The deafening silence has been intriguing, hasn't it? One suspects there are so many piles of dirty laundry in Florida (and other states), neither side has any interest in an honest, thorough investigation.

Have you read anything we've written? We've stated clearly: that's our plan, our goal, the only reason we're sitting here with a calculator.

Unlike you, unlike the Republicans, and also unlike the Democrats, we are curious to know which candidate won the election.

Until the year 2000, counting votes had historically been the accepted way to determine this.

Just once would satisfy us. Just once, with all the ballots counted.

Thousands of legally cast ballots were not counted, not even looked at, before the results were "certified."

Yes, Bush was ahead at every juncture of the spastic, constantly interrupted and overruled stop-and-go counting process. Bush was ahead on election night. Bush was ahead as his lawyers started suing to have the counting stopped. Bush was ahead through every subsequent lawsuit to stop the count. And Bush was still ahead when the counting of ballots was finally ordered suspended, then stopped, allegedly because time had run out.

When the Dodgers are ahead after the first inning, the second inning, the 3rd, 4th, and 5th innings, and they're still ahead after the 6th, 7th, and 8th innings, do you know what happens next?

They play the 9th inning.

Counting the ballots is not an impediment to determining who wins an election. It is — or at least, it used to be — the reason we hold elections in the first place.

We're well aware that George W. Bush is the president, and nothing's going to change that. What we're wondering is, does he deserve to be?

We'll know the answer to that question when the ballots have been counted.

We wouldn't have voted for either Bush or Gore if you'd pointed a gun at our heads. There haven't been two lesser candidates for president since the previous presidential election, and there probably won't be again until the next.

We believe that the candidate who won the election, fair and square by the rules, should be the nation's president.

We're watching the ballot counts in order to find out which candidate that might be.

We'd feel exactly the same way about the election if Gore had been the one 'declared' the winner and Bush had been 'declared' the loser. We'd still want to have all the ballots counted.

It says a lot about the state of the union that counting ballots is now considered controversial, partisan, or anything but obviously the right thing to do.

Helen & Harry Highwater  
(unknownnews at inbox.com)