Bush by a whisker but the fat lady has still to sing

Texas Governor George Bush is not quite President-elect Bush yet but being certified the official winner in Florida has brought the White House nearer to his grasp and farther out of the reach of Vice-President Al Gore.

But "it ain't over yet," as nearly everyone is saying, and the fat lady has yet to sing her final aria.

This extraordinary election is fascinating America and the rest of the world but the time is fast approaching when Americans at least will want it over. As James Baker, the former Secretary of State, who has been watching over Bush's interests during the Florida recounts, has put it: "At some point there must be closure. At some point the law must prevail and the lawyers must go home. We have reached that point."

Well, not if you are Al Gore. His only hope now of becoming president is in the hands of his lawyers and judges. Yesterday he embarked on a legal challenge to the official result in Florida which apparently has given the presidency for the next four years to George Bush. He believes he owes it to his supporters and the almost 50 million Americans who voted for him on November 7th.

Gore is within his rights to contest the Florida result as state law allows for this. But never before has such a challenge happened in the case of a state-wide, let alone a presidential, election. Most observers agree Gore's circumstances have significantly changed from protesting against how counts are being carried out in various Florida counties to contesting an officially certified result.

The clock is also running against Gore. On December 12th, Florida has to approve the names of its 25 members of the Electoral College so they, with the electors from the other 49 states, can elect the next president on December 18th. Following his certification as winner in Florida, Bush is now entitled to its 25 electors and thus be sure of a majority in the Electoral College.

But if Gore's legal challenges and more recounts are still running by December 12th, Florida might not be in a position to be part of the Electoral College process.

This could mean Florida's own legislature, which is Republican controlled, trying to get involved. It could mean an Electoral College unable to deliver an absolute majority to either Bush or Gore and so leaving it to Congress to choose a president - a prospect neither Bush nor Gore supporters would relish and one which would be demeaning for the country.

So huge pressures will be building up in the next two weeks for Gore not to drag out an election where he has won the popular vote but is losing the one that matters - the Electoral College - if the Florida decision is to stand.

Gore and his supporters are convinced if every vote cast in Florida were to be counted, he would be a clear winner there. He may be right, because the machine counts have shown an extraordinary number of ballots on which no vote for president is recorded as so-called "under votes", and most of these are in heavily Democratic counties like Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Broward.

The hand recount in Broward cut Bush's 930-vote lead to 537 out of 6 million votes cast in Florida. Miami-Dade refused to hand count, saying it could not meet last Sunday's deadline. If it had, it is hard to see how Mr Gore could lose Florida.

But the law is the law and the US Supreme Court, which normally steers clear of election minutiae, has agreed to hear a Bush appeal this Friday against the Florida Supreme Court ruling last week which allowed hand recounts after the normal deadline.

Oddly, Bush has now officially won in Florida without needing the help of the highest court in the land.

But Gore's new challenge to this result could yet strip Bush of his Florida win if the courts there find that Miami-Dade illegally refused to recount and that Palm Beach used too strict rules in hand counting the infamous "dimpled" ballots which were not punched through. And there are a number of other legal challenges in other counties which could undermine Bush's 537-vote lead.

Bush wisely has not yet assumed the "President-elect" title but in his statement after the Florida result he "respectfully" asked Gore to reconsider his decision to challenge it. This way "is not the best route for America", Bush urged.

With a country split down the middle in this presidential election, there will be many who will agree with Bush's appeal, mainly from Republican ranks of course. There will be danger for Gore if cracks now appear in the ranks of the Democrats.

Gore has told the New York Times he has "not heard from one single Democrat or supporter of my cause who has said you should stop insisting that these votes be counted". That was before Bush was certified the winner in Florida. So now with every day that passes, Gore will watch anxiously to see if he has the Democrats on Capitol Hill still behind him.

Some are beginning to query if Gore is wise to keep pushing his legal challenges. Democratic Senator Robert Torricelli of New Jersey now says: "There's an enormous burden on Al Gore to establish this fight should go on. My personal view is that it is increasingly likely the public is going to want this election brought to a close."

The first poll taken after the Florida certification by the Washington Post/ABC News showed 56 per cent saying they were confident the Florida votes had been accurately counted with 39 per cent against. Instant polls are very rough guides but after two weeks of TV coverage of weary counters in Florida holding up ballot papers to see if there were hanging, dimpled or pregnant chads to give guidance on voters' intentions, the American public is tiring of a process which was verging on the ridiculous.

But with a prize as high as the presidency of the United States, which he has sought with such intensity over the years, Al Gore can take ridicule if that is what it takes.