Florida voting probe confirms Bush win

By MARY DEJEVSKY Herald correspondent

WASHINGTON - Former Vice-President Al Gore would not have won the hard-fought United States presidency, even if the US Supreme Court had allowed Florida recounts to continue, it was reported yesterday.

A study conducted by a group of US newspapers concluded that even if the key recount in Florida's Miami-Dade County had been completed, Gore would still have lost the state of Florida by 49 votes.

George W. Bush was pronounced the winner of Florida's 23 electoral college votes, and thus the presidency, after a five-week court battle which culminated in the Supreme Court's ruling that the recounts were unlawful. The ruling, on December 12, gave Bush victory by 537 votes. Gore conceded defeat the following day.

The new study, commissioned by USA Today, the Miami Herald and the Knight Ridder group of newspapers, found that, even if the most generous interpretation of the voting standard in Florida had been observed, Gore would still have lost. If a stricter standard of counting had been observed, Bush's margin of victory would have increased.

Democrats believed from the start of the legal battle that if the three recounts requested by the Gore campaign had been completed, they would have given Gore victory. Their argument rested on the relatively high number of so-called "undervotes" in those counties - Palm Beach County, Broward County and Miami-Dade - and on Gore's victory in the popular vote nationwide which, they believed, made it unlikely that he had lost Florida in such a close vote.

The definition of an undervote in this case was when a voter had successfully punched or marked the ballot paper for all categories except that of President.

It was the lack of a statewide definition of what constituted a valid vote that helped persuade the Supreme Court to halt the recounts.

Of the three counties where the Gore campaign asked for recounts, only Broward County completed the process by the deadline set by the state. Palm Beach County missed an extended deadline by two hours. Miami-Dade stopped counting after a mini-riot - which Democrats claimed was fomented by a Republican rent-a-mob.

The study independently examined all 60,000 undervotes in Florida's 67 counties. The results from Miami-Dade are the first to be released, but they are potentially the most conclusive: this was the largest county where the Gore campaign requested a recount.

The complete findings on the Florida vote are expected within weeks. These could still show, as diehard Democratic supporters insist, that Gore won the popular vote in Florida and should thus have won the state. But the Gore campaign never requested a statewide manual recount, limiting its appeal to the three counties where the number of Democratic "under-votes" was greatest - and thus the potential for increasing Gore's tally.

Republicans hailed the findings as confirmation that the right candidate emerged the victor - by however convoluted a route - and that Bush is a legitimate President. Democrats, however, said that it illustrated the need for the recounts to be completed. Another group of news organisations, made up of the Associated Press, the Washington Post and the New York Times, is also reviewing undervotes but has not yet released its conclusions.

The results will not, however, halt the soul-searching about election procedures in general, and the accuracy of punch-card ballot Machines in particular. Florida is one of many states re-examining election procedures and likely to face a bill of millions of dollars for updating their voting machines before the next presidential election in 2004.

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