John asks:

> > As a Canadian I know only a little about the US Electoral College and its
>  > voting resposibilities. However, is it possible for a state to abstain
>  > from the voting in December? Seems like a good thing for Florida to do
>  > since the difference between the candidates seems less than a reasonable
>  > margin of error in the counting.

The answer is not only yes, a state can voluntarily abstain, but a state can
also be denied voting privileges. Nominally, the states meet in their various
capitals on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December to
certify their chosen slate of electors, but they don't have to actually get
their certifications in by that date. They have until January 6th of the
following year to do that. If they cannot come to a decision by then, that
state's electors simply don't vote and the majority is taken from the
remainder of those that do.

If that should prove to be true for Florida, then Gore will win the
presidency by virtually any combination that you can imagine, even if other
extremely close states such as New Mexico and Oregon were to also abstain.

Given the error rate in the ballot counts that Bruce was talking about a day
or so ago, it might be good to suggest that any state that is tied within
0.05% automatically abstain. The current "tie" in Florida is 0.01%, with a
counting error rate at least 10 times that number.

No matter who you're for, as things stand now, under these extraordinary
conditions, the determination of the presidency has become essentially a
coin-toss produced by a random number generator.

Wirt Atmar