Newspaper: Bush Would Have Won Fla.

Feb. 26 -- If Florida elections officials had accepted hand-recounted presidential "undervote" tallies from four disputed counties, George Bush probably would have won the state anyway, according to an analysis by the Miami Herald.

A check of Miami-Dade County's undervotes — ballots on which machines could not detect a vote for president — showed Al Gore would have picked up no more than 49 votes there, 140 votes too few to pass Bush, according to The Herald's Monday editions.

Bush ultimately won Florida, and therefore the presidency, more than a month after Election Day. His win came when the U.S. Supreme Court halted a subsequent statewide recount, prompting Gore, Bush's Democratic opponent, to concede defeat.

Gore Votes Didn’t Add Up

Bush led in Florida by 930 votes after Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris refused to extend a deadline to accommodate Gore-requested recounts in three of four disputed counties, and then added in results from overseas absentee ballots.

Volusia County got its recount completed in time for the Harris-enforced deadline. Broward and Palm Beach counties completed hand recounting undervotes after the deadline — unofficially netting Gore 741 additional votes. Miami-Dade County discontinued its recount before finishing.

The Herald's analysis added in the 49 possible votes it found in Miami-Dade County to the 741 Broward and Palm Beach votes, for a total of 790 extra Gore votes — short of the 930 needed for victory at the time, before later court battles and recounts modified the deficit.

According to The Herald, the 10,644 Miami-Dade ballots it reviewed were physically handled by elections officials, and read by an accountant from BDO Seidman, LLP, and a Herald reporter.

The analysis concluded there were 1,555 ballots marked in a way that appeared to favor Gore, and 1,506 that may have favored Bush.

"There were many people who expected there was a bonanza ofvotes here for Al Gore, and it turns out there was not," Heraldexecutive editor Martin Baron told The Associated Press.