Consortium

The Consortium: "In going with the “Bush Wins” headlines, the news organizations downplayed their more dramatic finding that Gore would have won if a full statewide recount had been conducted in accordance with state law. Using the clear-intent-of-the-voter standard, Gore beat Bush by margins ranging from 60 to 171 votes, depending on what standard was used in judging the “undervotes.

"A document, revealed by Newsweek, indicates that the Florida recount that was stopped last year by five Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court would have taken into account so-called “overvotes” that heavily favored Gore.

If those “overvotes” were counted, as now it appears they would have been, Gore would have carried Florida regardless of what standard of chad – dimpled, hanging, punched-through – was used in counting the so-called “undervotes,” according to an examination of those ballots by a group of leading news organizations.

In other words, Bush lost not only the national popular vote by more than a half million ballots, but he would have lost the key state of Florida and thus the presidency, if Florida’s authorities had been allowed to count the votes that met the state’s legal requirement of demonstrating the clear intent of the voter."”"