They're back.The chads, dimpled, pregnant and hanging; the scribbled overvotes, the inscrutable undervotes. This week, a year long, 900-thousand dollar review of disputed Florida ballots was released by a consortium of the country's heavy journalistic hitters.
There's still a muddle, and plenty of irony, but most importantly, there's data. The conclusion, in the headlines, "Florida recounts still favored Bush," but in the fine print, "Gore would have won if every vote was counted." The polite and the pragmatic concur, "what's done is done, there's a war, fuggetaboutit." But while George Bush sits in the oval office, and Al Gore roams rural America in a rental car, questions about the health of American democracy remain.
