update from florida - OT

[heidi]

No: HPFGUIDX 5496

Bush's  precarious lead over Al Gore in the presidential race in Florida
diminished much further Wednesday night as revised results from 28 counties
shaved 841 votes off Bush's  1,784-vote advantage.

 Bush still leads Gore, but his margin has shrunk to 943 votes in the state that
will pick the next president. Gore gained 1,186 votes and Bush 345.

And we're still waiting for an unknown number of absentee ballots -the major
military group in the state is in port & not overseas so the understanding is
that most of them who are registered in florida voted on tuesday - and there's
about 1000+ registered voters from south florida living in israel - the
supposition is most of them will be voting for Gore (most are registered
democrats, plus there's the Leiberman Factor)

Also, in addition to the unusually high 3000+ votes for Buchanan in Palm Beach
(home of the Weird Looking Ballot), about 19,000 ballots were thrown out because
they had *2* candidates punched -one of hte tv stations down here reported that
they had been told by a polling person that a large percentage of them marked
both Gore & Buchanan, which gives more credence to the "we were confused"
argument.

Someone asked about whether any people who were confused asked for help with the
ballots -  some have told their stories to the press, syaing they were told to
punch the Buchanan box for Gore, or they asked for a new ballot (which they are
allowed to do as a matter of law) and their incorrect ballots were taken &
stuffed into the box against their wishes.

People are suing in Palm Beach so we'll see what happens with this.