Mr Nerd:

You are absolutely right. If the screwed up overvotes had been counted, which were mostly for Gore, Gore would have won.

It is my personal opinion (which is probably different from yours) is that it is even possible that if Gore had not initiated legal challenges he might have won.

SP Times: "Both Gore and Bush lost votes because voters marked the ballot beside their favorite's name and then wrote Bush or Gore in elsewhere, crossed out all other candidates besides the one they wanted, or tried to correct a mistake and then vote again on the same ballot.

Those overvotes were Gore's best hope, but in the wake of the butterfly ballot controversy, the Gore team barely discussed overvotes and its lawyers never argued in court to count them.

"Nobody asked for a contest of the overvotes," Gore lawyer David Boies told the U.S. Supreme Court in the last hearing.

The media analysis shows that among those 3,690 overvotes that could be considered legitimate votes, 6 out of 10 were cast for Gore.

Instead of pursuing overvotes, the Gore team sought manual recounts of undervotes in four counties: Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Volusia counties.

At the time, it sounded like a good idea. Gore already led in those four counties, and he figured to pick up votes at a faster rate than Bush in a hand recount. But Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris refused to certify some of those recounts and wouldn't allow time for all of them to be completed.

Even with a recount of just those four counties, the media analysis shows, Gore still would have lost by 225 votes."

http://www.sptimes.com/News/111201/Lostvotes/Recount__Bush.shtml

In any event whatever you say is correct.

Old Guy