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The heart of the fight was those confusing Palm Beach ballots. Some 19,000 had been thrown out because voters had punched two holes for President; an additional 10,000 did not register any presidential choice. Hearing about the ballot's design problem, other voters in the county became convinced on Wednesday that they had accidentally voted for Buchanan, whose total of 3,407 votes in the county was three times as high as in neighboring counties with different-style ballots. Buchanan, never one to miss a chance to stir hot soup if it could spill on someone named Bush, went on the air and said he did not think all those votes had been intended for him. With Bush emerging from the initial count with a 1,784-vote lead, this could mean the margin of victory for Gore.
When they looked closely as the recount was getting under way, Democrats noticed that in other counties with punch ballots, a disproportionate number had no votes for President. In Broward alone, which gave Gore 68% of its vote, there were 6,686 ballots that did not register a presidential vote. In Pinellas, election authorities figured out this problem and began removing the little hanging flap from the punch cards, although they didn't catch all the faulty ballots before the full recount was completed. Nonetheless, Gore picked up 417 votes there, and now it became important for Democrats to press for a hand count.
That is also why, as the legally required machine recount was taking place, both sides ramped up the war of words. By Thursday, Daley wasn't doing a very good job of containing his anger. He accused the Bush people of trying to "presumptively crown themselves the victors, to try to put in place a transition," thereby running "the risk of dividing the American people." With that, the markets began to wobble, the NASDAQ bungee-jumping 87 points before springing back up.
"Daley really hit a nerve," says a top aide in the Bush camp. Said another Republican in Washington, in a not so veiled reference to Daley's father's reputation as the Chicago mayor who cooked elections: "The idea of being lectured on the sanctity of the ballot by Daley is pretty galling to Republicans. It's like waving a red flag." Bush campaign chairman Evans denounced the Democrats for "politicizing and distorting these events at the expense of our democracy."
Already the pressure was building. By the time the recount was over, Bush's original margin had sagged to a mere 327 votes, but he remained ahead. Prominent Democrats like New Jersey Senator Bob Torricelli and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich called on the Gore campaign not to lawyer the race to death. Editorial pages looked for the Maginot Line.
The Gore camp tried to get a sense of where the public stood, how long it could fight on. But officials said they were not able to poll the issue because there was no money to pay for it. As of 5 p.m. Friday, the campaign ceased to exist legally. Everyone was ordered to turn in cell phones, laptops and pagers.