>>"Margin of error" and "Statistical Tie" are terms which have meaning in opinion polls, but in elections they have no meaning at all. If a candidate is ahead by one vote when the counting has been completed, and after repeated recounts, that's the winner.<<

Reneging on my promise to drop this irrelevant matter, let me briefly comment: What you've said above is what we have all believed all of our lives. The dirty secret unveiled in Florida is that we were naive. I don't have the time, energy, or even, admittedly, the expertise to support this argument, but I did have it explained to me twice by a person who is highly skilled in statistics.

Even if the Florida recounts were handled by objective, unbiased, entirely competent personnel (which of course they weren't - let's not go there), their ability to count and recount to the last vote is far more imperfect than we gullible voters believed. This is especially true with the punch cards, but remains true even in more sophisticated counting systems. The margin of error, though I can't cite it, on a multi-million voter base exceeds the few thousand disputed chads, etc., and allegedly intimidated or frustrated voters. (BTW, There is a current spat in the news about a Broward county election official (Oliphant) and her alleged incompetence, including the recent find of a few hundred unopened absentee ballots from the primary, in a file drawer in her office.)

Dan