THIS business of Florida hand recount In the US Presidential race is a total hoax and a charade. If people with over 200 years of rich democratic practice, heritage and history behind them, and sample ballots and ample instructions, spoonfeeding. prodding, persuasion and beseech, cannot cast a simple vote correctly In arguably the most important election in the world, their votes do not deserve to be counted. As for hand counting, we are talking about a slew of didactic mathematical geniuses Lhat need a couple of calculators and access to Microsoft Excel to add two plus two or multiply Iwo by two! Average Americans are notorious In their downright Inability to hand count anything, perhaps even their own children or pel chickens. If you saw bored.

surfeit time at hand, old fogies with horn rim thick glasses trying to discern voter intent with squinting eyes, you would guess whal a sham and how capricious tills whole exercise Is.

The use of machines for precise count of votes, instead of blunder-prone mere mortals Is a major technological break through. We know they hand count votes In Bangladesh; need I say more? Machines are preferable for vote counting for exactly the same reasons for which mechanical robots replaced human labour in assembly plants in most advanced innovative countries. A properly programmed machine is vastly superior and more accurate than even a mathematical genius. For the same reason even a chess maestro like Kasparov or Anand

cannot beat IBM Blue in a chess contest.

Two salient reasons Gore wants to be President despicably desperately are: (1) He has played this exalted Presidential game in his mind, like some people play the doctor and nurse game since early childhood; and (2) Democrats are extremely unkind to their fallen Presidential contenders (examples: Mondale and Dukakis, two inept and ineffectual candidates like Gore). He will be put out to pasture. An ambassadorship to Benin at a future Democrat administration Is the best Gore can hope for.

Dien again 1 may be totally wrong. Through the maze of lawsuits and counter legal actions. Gore may actually ascend Die Presidential throne.