When to stop

Though Republican mud-slinging from the whiny James Baker to the well-organized spontaneous rallies of the faithful masses make the decision much harder, Vice President Al Gore should retract his commitment to continue fighting over Florida ballots and announce that he will not press beyond Sunday evening. Mr. Gore especially has recognized that for the sake of the office of the presidency this race needs a clear conclusion. The Florida Supreme Court set it for 5 p.m. Sunday; Mr. Gore should accept it.

The court set that date, in part, to leave time for contesting Sunday’s outcome. Mr. Gore’s complaints are not based on the outcome but on the 3-week-old issue of recounts. He wants, in what has now become a Democratic mantra, every vote to count. But while he scratches for a few hundred more Gore dimples he and his advocates ignore that nothing like every vote is going to count – not the tens of thousands of absentee ballots improperly filled out, not the 20,000 ballots tossed out in Duval County for double voting, and not the 19,000 rejected in Palm Beach County. Though the problem is not unique to Florida, the nation has learned that an election system like Florida’s, set up to handle 6 million ballots, is not accurate when forced to decide on the basis of a few thousand votes, never mind a few hundred.

Lawmakers themselves recognize the limits of the system and allow for recounts, which Mr. Gore to date has used properly, if zealously. But as the court affirmed, it is up to the counties to decide whether to conduct hand recounts and when to end them. Miami-Dade County has decided not to go forward with a hand recount. However indecisive Gov. George Bush’s lead of 700 or 800 votes might seem, if it holds up through Sunday, that should be the end of the counting. Conversely, if in the unlikely event that Mr. Gore does pull ahead by that time, it is Mr. Bush who should concede without further argument.

There has been plenty of hypocrisy in the dispute. State-loving Republicans’ dropped their principles in the sprint to federal court, then forgot about their concrete letter-of-the-law doctrine for deadlines when it came to missing postmarks on overseas ballots. Democrats’ insisted recounts were vital to maintain the authority and dignity of the presidency, then wanted the state supreme court to rule on ballot dimples; they leaned on the spirit of the law for deadlines but lost faith in the spirit on the overseas ballots. Really, the White House can’t endure much more support from the two candidates; the continued defense of their positions is doing more harm than any faulty ballot could.

When the count is as close as it is in Florida, the vote has all the justice of musical chairs. The music must stop at some point and when it does, someone must lose no matter how worthy the player. The music stops Sunday.