Defeated presidential candidate Mr Al Gore would now be sitting in the White House if every chad or indentation on ballots in Palm Beach County, Florida, had been counted, according to an analysis by the Palm Beach Postnewspaper released today.
In its ballot-by-ballot review of the 9,150 undervotes in Palm Beach County, the Postconcluded that Mr Gore could have gained 784 more votes than President Bush if every "hanging chad, pinhole, ding and dimple" next to the candidates' names had counted.
County officials threw out more than 5,700 punch card ballots in which holes were not completely punched through.
The newspaper said confusion over the county's now famous "butterfly ballot" may have cost Mr Gore an additional 6,600 votes, far over what he would have needed to nullify President George W Bush's thin lead in Florida and win the presidency. President Bush won Florida by 537 votes.
In its review of the 19,125 punch cards discarded as overvotes, or where more than one mark appears on the ballot, the Postconcluded that Mr Gore lost 6,607 votes.
Although only a few thousand votes were involved, the Postobserved that the margins were so thin in the crucial southern state, they were key to election victory.
More than 5,000 voters in Palm Beach County invalidated their ballots by punching holes for Mr Gore and Reform Party candidate Mr Pat Buchanan, the newspaper found. Another 2,900 voted for Mr Gore and punched a hole for Socialist Mr David McReynolds, whose name was below Gore's.
"The Palm Beach Post'srecount is another nail in the coffin of the mistaken notion that George W Bush got more votes in Florida," Democratic National Committee chairman Mr Terry McAuliffe said in response t the report.
"Plain and simple, the report today shows that Gore won," insisted Mr McAuliffe.
A leading Republican supporter dismissed the Post'sconclusions. "You're trying to hard to find a correlation here. You try to compile statistics and correlate them to a result that amounts to nothing more than speculation," former Montana governor Mr Marc Racicot, speaking for the Republicans, told the publication.
AFP