Tampabay: Politics still trump grace in this race

The state Supreme Court ruled late Thursday that there is "no legal impediment" to continuing the manual vote-counting in South Florida. That is fine as far as it goes.

Of course, there also is "no legal impediment" to declaring either candidate is the new Grand Wazoo of Planet Goober. The real (and unanswered) question still is whether Secretary of State Katherine Harris has to accept it.

So our eventual choice -- or the courts' choice -- still boils down to:

(1) Let the Democrats keep counting votes by hand in Democratic areas until they dig up enough new votes to elect Al Gore.

(2) Let Harris, a Republican state official who is a supporter of George W. Bush, ignore any more counting, keeping Bush narrowly ahead.

We can't vote for "neither." You can't take the politics out of politics.

Any other solution -- such as a statewide recount -- is outside the law. Cooking one up will take a bunch of, uh, creative judges with "Supreme" somewhere in their title.

It would be sooooo sweet now if the overseas absentee ballots on Saturday put Gore back in the lead. Not because I am cheering for Gore, but because it would be hilarious to watch the flip-flop.

Gore would suddenly have to say: The people have spoken. And Bush would say, no, we must keep going until the votes are counted fairly.

There are lots of things we have learned for future reference. It would be nice if by the time of the next election, our Legislature had given us:

An impartial vote-counter, such as an independent, non-partisan state elections commission.

Crystal-clear rules and deadlines for recounting votes.

A uniform, statewide, modern voting system that is less subject to error.

But for now, we have to wrap up the mess at hand.

My Democratic friends are still trying to argue that a manual recount in Democratic counties is more "accurate." But it is merely different.

A room of partisan human beings, peering at bumps and dimples in little punch cards and giving their best guess, is not a guarantee of more accuracy.

A manual vote count should increase the victor's margin in each county. A hand count in Democratic counties will produce a higher net gain of Democratic votes. Gore's "offer" of a statewide recount is not within his power to grant.

Democrats say: Tough noogies! The Republicans should have been on the ball like us and requested manual recounts in Republican counties. But these same Democrats boo-hooed when the Republicans called "tough noogies" on the confusing Palm Beach ballot. Apparently, the Rule of Tough Noogies applies only to the other side.

The venom directed against the secretary of state is partly unfair. She had a basis in law for setting the Tuesday deadline for vote-counting. She had a basis in law for declining to consider more recounts.

She did use bad judgment in openly backing Bush's campaign. Few county-level elections supervisors would dare be so openly partisan. She also has done a lousy PR job. Like Gov. Jeb Bush, maybe she should have recused herself. None of this justifies the Democratic claim that she is Cruella De Vil.

This fight will get still worse before it gets better. Because there are no clear, standard rules for making sure overseas absentee ballots are valid, we might see another round of legal challenges after Saturday. But sooner or later one guy is going to end up with more votes, and the other needs to quit with whatever grace he has left.

None of this proves the system is broken. It only proves we had a close election. Another sports analogy: If Florida is tied with Florida State on Saturday, and the game is decided on a close call, it will not prove that college football is "broken." It will prove only that there was a close game. It happens now and then, even to Florida State.

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