Then there was Tuesday night. George W. Bush was leading Al Gore by 1,784 votes after Florida's Tuesday count. Here in Washington state, the latest results give U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton about a 3,000-vote lead over Maria Cantwell with more than 1.6 million votes counted. The Senate race is still too close to call. Had 39 voters in each of the state's 39 counties voted a different way, Cantwell would be in the lead.
Every vote does count.
So there are laws in Washington and in Florida that require an automatic recount when races are so close that every vote may affect the outcome. It should be noted that election workers in Kitsap County processed more than 64,000 ballots in a five-hour period Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning. There were 135 different versions of the county ballot that went to the polling places and to absentee by-mail voters. Inevitably, some of the returned ballots can't be counted because they are incorrectly or unclearly marked. One last point.