If you are referring to Miami-Dade this is relevant, otherwise disregard.
Democrats respond that the Miami-Dade manual recount was clearly picking up a lot
of votes for Mr. Gore before it was cut off last Wednesday. In the 135 precincts (out
of 614) that had been recounted, Mr. Gore had picked up 157 votes. Democrats
reasoned that at that rate they were on their way to adding between 700 and 900
votes to Mr. Gore's margin in the county.
This is specious. Brian Kalt, an assistant professor of law at Michigan State University,
has closely followed Miami-Dade's recount. He notes that by beginning in numerical
order, it proceeded first through heavily Democratic precincts, many of which had
gone for Gore by as much as 9 to 1. The 135 recounted precincts as a whole gave Mr.
Gore 74% of the vote, compared with only 53% countywide. That means that the
remaining precincts as a whole went for Mr. Bush, and would have delivered far fewer
additional votes for Mr. Gore.
"The count was just about to move into heavily Republican and Cuban areas," says
Mr. Kalt. "Given how the rest of the precincts would have voted, I don't see how Gore
would have picked up votes. If the trend had continued, an admitted if, Bush would
actually have gained 400 votes countywide."
Mr. Kalt's analysis squares with that of other political observers I spoke with. But such
realities don't fit easily into the "spin rooms" of cable television, where even the
anchors are parroting the line that Miami-Dade would have been a "gold mine" of
Democratic votes. No one mentions that the Miami-Dade board originally had voted
unanimously not to have a manual recount on Nov. 14, after a sample recount of
three overwhelmingly Democratic precincts turned up only six extra Gore votes. The
board voted to hold a recount only after it came under intense political pressure from
Democrats and became the target of several Democratic lawsuits.
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