OUSE MINORITY Leader Richard Gephardt raised a troubling possibility yesterday: that someone using Florida's accessible Freedom of Information Act will next year perform the recounts now in dispute and discover that Vice President Al Gore actually won Florida, even as George W. Bush is serving as president.
It is not a farfetched scenario. And while it would surely not threaten Bush's incumbency, it would brand him as the most illegitimate of American presidents, a man who held office despite losing both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote.
The best way to avoid such a national embarrassment is still - as it has been since Nov. 8 - to count as many votes as possible.
The efforts by Bush's lawyers and Secretary of State Katherine Harris to limit the recounts have damaged basic democratic ideals. That these actions have been motivated by partisan self-interest is shown by the zeal with which the Bush camp has pushed, in court and out, for the recounting of foreign military ballots.
Self-interest, of course, has also driven Gore. While he offered to abide by a statewide hand recount - which would have been the best course for everyone - he has only sued to require a recount in Democratic counties.
But Gore was right last night to insist that convenience is less important than honoring voters, ''whatever the outcome.''
In practice, Palm Beach County produced smaller gains for Gore than he had anticipated. Perhaps the same will be true if a hand recount is conducted in Miami-Dade. In this case, Bush would enter the White House with far more legitimacy than the process, tangled largely by his efforts to truncate it, now offers.
Should Gore's efforts produce enough additional votes to put him ahead, Bush will surely argue that the targeted hand recount was unfair. This would be a valid complaint. In Florida, 27 of the 67 counties still use the outdated punchcard ballot method. Statewide, machine counters recorded no vote for president on more than three percent of these ballots - more than twice the rate of counties using modern voting techniques.
The shortage of time is now added to legal maneuvering as a constraint upon potential remedies. Still, there is enough time to give this election the legitimacy it so desperately needs. It is now the halfway point between the election and the voting of the Electoral College on Dec. 18.
The goal still must be the overriding one identified by the Florida Supreme Court: to find and count as many legitimate votes as humanly possible. If the remaining days are used to their fullest, the nation should have a president it can believe in next Jan. 20.
