David --

It is distressing to deal with the uncertainties of the current situation and experience our powerlessness as two candidates duke it out for the presidency. Given the extremely close situation, I'm in favor of their campaigns, for the time being, trying to get as accurate a count as possible.

Obviously, though, since this is a partisan campaign, it's each candidate for himself. Fortunately we do have the controls of law and interpretations in the courts to guide the process.

So, the Gore campaign is simply doing their job.

Now, the Bush campaign has already benefitted from a hand recount in Seminole county in which they received 98 votes. I haven't heard that mentioned by James Baker in his increasingly strident attacks on the value of hand recounts.

There is another interesting fact about the counties in which the Democrats have requested recounts. All of them use the punch card ballot. The manufacturers of these systems acknowledge that they record votes less than perfectly, and many other counties in Florida have moved on to newer, more accurate technology. Many of the counties in which Bush has a majority use newer technology, and his campaign would benefit significantly less from reexamining those.

On that basis, I think that Bill Daley's statements have some truth to them, though they are definitely partisan, I'll agree.

At the bottom, though, I also feel a sense of discomfort that there is not a neutral and as fair as possible process to determine the winner of the Florida electoral votes. As it is, our system has determined that the courts have an important role, where adversarial positions are evaluated and acted upon, at points in which the executive process is found wanting.