NE WEEK LATER, the identity of the next president is no more certain this morning than it was when bleary-eyed citizens awoke the day after the election.

But some things are clearer. One is that the American public is once again acting more sensibly than political insiders and much of the press, especially on the question of timing. According to dozens of polls and a multitude of interviews, it is apparent that most Americans want as many votes as humanly possible counted as accurately as humanly possible - even if it takes some time.

In Florida yesterday, what had seemed like a watershed legal event did not produce resolution. Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis said the state could enforce its 5 p.m. deadline for certification of votes from all 67 counties. Supporters of Vice President Al Gore had feared that such a ruling, if upheld, could give the presidency prematurely to Texas Governor George W. Bush. And Bush's camp predictably cheered the evening's tally - a 300-vote lead. But Lewis's opinion went on to say that counties are free to conduct hand counts, which could be submitted later and accepted or not, at the discretion of Secretary of State Katherine Harris.

This was a case of a judge essentially passing the buck. Apart from a proscription that her decisions could not be ''arbitrary,'' Lewis gave little guidance as to whether such hand counts should be honored. A spokesman for Harris said such revisions would be evaluated ''on applicable facts and circumstances,'' whatever that means.

But the hand counts should most definitely be honored. In fact, the most sensible resolution still seems to be for Bush and Gore to support a hand count of the entire state, with both to accept that result as final.

Former Secretary of State James Baker said yesterday the American people are eager ''to bring this election to an end,'' but there is no urgency. A full hand count might take 10 days or two weeks. Even if it took a month, that would leave the winner with five weeks to put his administration together. This should be no problem for Gore, who has been prepared to take over as president at a moment's notice for the last eight years, or for Bush, who knows much about the White House through his father. Andrew Card, touted as Bush's likely chief of staff, has been deputy chief of staff, and Dick Cheney was also chief of staff.

It now seems that Bush lost the popular vote by some 200,000. If he nevertheless won the presidency because of the outworn workings of the Electoral College, that is acceptable. But a Bush presidency based on a premature count in Florida, if it turned out to be wrong, should not be acceptable to any member of the patient American public.