(1) In competitions, somebody wins. That means that somebody loses.

(2) Margins of victory can be interesting, suggestive, worth probing for a number of reasons. But they have nothing to do with the question of winning and losing.

(3) In athletic contests it is nowadays not unusual for a skier or a runner to win by 1/100th of a second. Using round numbers, 100 million Americans voted, one-half going to each of the two major candidates. Winning or losing by 300 votes in a political contest in which 6 million voted is to win or lose by less than 1/10,000th of a point. That kind of thing happens all the time in sports.

(4) We are not engaged in a national plebiscite on the Electoral College system. Both of the candidates have sworn to uphold the Constitution, and it decrees how new presidents are to be selected. Those who wish to amend the Constitution are entirely free to do so. See Article V. And set aside a couple of years to get it done.

(5) The single question that properly occupies us is what was the recorded vote in Florida. This is a different question from, What would the vote have been in Florida if (a) Nader wasn't running, (b) Buchanan wasn't running, (c) voters gave more time to deliberating over the ballot they used, or (d) voters had given more time to deliberating the leverage of a vote on that day, in that state.

(6) Accordingly, procedure is king. Nothing else counts, or should count. Procedure asks a relatively simple question: How did the voters mark their ballots on Nov. 7?

There is some pretty gross ideological opportunizing going the rounds. A full-page ad in The New York Times splashes in. The signers include Rosie O'Donnell, Gloria Steinem, Bianca Jagger, Arthur Miller, Toni Morrison, Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman. What are they asking for? Hint: Two of the signers, Harold Evans and Harvey Weinstein, spent election evening in the company of Bill and Hillary.

What the so-called Emergency Committee of Concerned Citizens 2000 asks is that we acknowledge Al Gore as almost certainly the elected president "by a clear constitutional majority of the popular vote and the Electoral College." But there is no such thing as a "constitutional majority of the popular vote." Continued...