Who wins is not the main issue.The main issue is that the process by which they win should be fair, and should have not have been manipulated.

Insofar as Bush has actively tried to obstruct any manual recount throughout the state, which seems like a very reasonable and just way of sorting things out in a close election, he has in my view demonstrated that he is unworthy of any kind of office. And I don't like the idea of someone with those kind of ethics in a position to affect all our lives.

I accept that it is quite possible that Gore would have done the same things, and I would feel exactly the same about him if he had.

But what I have really found disconcerting, is the way that people at all levels seem have lined up on all this, not on the basis of what is the fairest way of counting the votes, but on the basis of what is the way of counting the votes which is most likely to favour their preferred candidate.

Imagine that, in advance of an election, there a bunch of people, judges, politicians, ordinary people, had been discussing voting systems, and manual recounts, and how to deal with undervotes abnd pregnant chads and all that stuff.

Is it conceivable that they would have divided in their opinions on such matters along party political lines? When there was no advantage or disadvantage to their party in choosing one way of doing it or another?

And I think that the way that it has been distorted by people who see party advantage as more important than the democratic process, is very depressing and ominous, and far more important than whether it's Fraud W Bush or the Walking Wardrobe in the White House in January.