Myths are being shattered in Election 2000. Here are just a few:

It turns out that your vote DOES count, there is no more Democratic Southern strategy (when Gore could not even carry his home state of Tennessee), and all the technology in the world can't keep the networks from looking extremely stupid.

Part of the situation can be explained using an analogy drawn from a common high school experience. You have the ideal prom date in mind, but she gets taken by someone else. Now, you're left with deciding between (let's say) two far less desirable girls. You have to attend the prom as a social imperative, but you're not happy with the prospects available to you.

Human nature dictates that you will be undecided for a long time, perhaps even tossing a coin to make the final decision.

Extrapolate this to millions of voters, and it's not difficult to explain both the closeness of the election, as well as the large number of undecideds late in the game.

There are more factors in play, of course.

Since everyone is a victim, and since every problem that one encounters must have a remedy (usually via the government), we now have large groups of individuals who claim that they were confused by a ballot. It matters not that this ballot was approved by the proper officials, and it matters not that the opportunity existed to obtain a replacement ballot at the time of voting, after getting your questions answered.

Truth be told, many of the people involved did not know that they were confused until someone pointed it out to them!

Simply put, in any form of human endeavor, there IS no perfect system. Even the hand recount has potential problems given the fragile nature of the ballots, and the possibility for errant holes to develop in the cards.

Moreover, any form of human endeavor can be sabotaged if the minutiae of process is emphasized over results. How accurate and detailed should the triage nurse be? Do we really want her to spend so much time getting the order of patients correct that one of them dies in the emergency room?

What if you get a parking ticket for expired time and find out that instead of timing out 60 minutes, the meter actually expires at 59 minutes and 48 seconds? How far would you pursue your case?

Sad to say, the more the election process is scrutinized, the more it will become apparent that some Pandora's boxes should never be opened. Florida was by no means the only close state in this election.

Forgotten in all the discussion is the rather large point that beyond the design problems and miscounting of ballots, there is NO remedy for an ill-informed, dense, apathetic, and lazy electorate.

Add to that a long history of inferior candidates, and the results should not surprise anyone.