ASHINGTON - The process looks disorderly, but it isn't a crisis yet. The road is full of speedbumps, but it can lead to a desirable destination.
Even as the presidential puzzle in Florida gets more complicated and contentious, some political specialists are counseling patience - the country isn't in immediate risk and the public isn't clamoring for a president-elect - and pointing to solutions that might pass the fair-and-legitimate test.
Among them are proposals to hand count all the ballots in Florida; allow at least the rest of the week to finish a manual recount in four Florida counties; or recount votes in all states where the race was very close.
Protracted legal wrangling - yesterday's choice for the two presidential campaigns - was not a popular option.
Former senator Paul Simon of Illinois says diplomats James A. Baker III and Warren M. Christopher, who are representing George W. Bush and Al Gore, respectively, should agree to a hand recount of the ballots in every Florida county and accept unequivocally the result, with the winner claiming the state's 25 electoral votes and the White House.
''It would take some time and some restraint on the part of the two candidates and the people who speak for them,'' said Simon, a Democrat who heads a public policy institute at Southern Illinois University. ''But it would give a terminal point and solve it fairly before the public really tired of this thing.''
Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts called for hand counts throughout Florida and recounts if Bush calls for them in other states, including Iowa and Wisconsin, where Gore won by razor-thin margins. All those results can be certified before the Electoral College meets Dec. 18, Kerry said.
''Americans want a fair count, and the presidency demands it,'' said Kerry, who was traveling yesterday to join President Clinton in Vietnam. ''I don't think anybody should panic or be dismayed. This is democracy working at its best, and America can well afford to wait patiently while the recount process is gone through.''
A Newsweek poll showed that by 75 percent to 25 percent, Americans say they prefer removing ''all reasonable doubt'' about the Florida results to ''getting matters resolved as soon as possible.'' Some 44 percent of the respondents said they thought the election should be settled by Friday, when absentee ballots are due and counted, but 36 percent said the process should continue until ''all legal issues are resolved.''
There is little consensus among scholars and public officials for continuing the legal skirmishing that started this week. ''The endgame comes this weekend; Florida has to make a choice and come to closure,'' said G. Calvin Mackenzie, a professor of government at Colby College in Maine. ''I would be surprised if we don't have a concession from one of the candidates on Saturday, and I can't imagine public patience enduring much beyond then.''
Mackenzie said he did not expect the ruling by Florida's secretary of state, Katherine Harris, requiring certification of all votes by 5 p.m. today, to stand. Friday would be a more reasonable deadline, he said, giving the four counties doing manual recounts time to get their work done.
But Roger Pilon, director of constitutional studies for the libertarian Cato Institute, said it is unfair and ''profoundly troubling'' that the Gore campaign is demanding hand recounts selectively, in only some Florida counties. Pilon said Gore should drop his challenges to the already-completed machine recounts of the Florida vote and accept the results that are to be posted in Tallahassee tonight.
''It should end at 5 p.m. [today] with the machine ballots, because that will guarantee equal treatment for voters on all sides, and it should end Friday with the absentee ballots,'' Pilon said. ''Once you start hand-counting, it is a never-ending process, one that at least will take us into next year.''
C. Boyden Gray, a Washington lawyer who was counsel to President Bush, said that there are deadlines beyond Florida's for picking a president - next month's meeting of the Electoral College, the certification in Congress in early January, the inauguration on Jan. 20 - that argue against any efforts that begin to look ''perilously like another election.
''How long will public sentiment tolerate that? Not much longer,'' Gray said.
But the Newsweek poll suggests the public isn't restive, and there are no particular danger signals from either the financial markets or foreign capitals that require either candidate to concede the presidential race.
''There is not a constitutional crisis, and this is not a deeply divided nation,'' said Joseph S. Nye, dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. ''We have to make sure we count properly, and there is no rush. After all, we have a president in place until Jan. 20, who is probably less of a lame duck as a result of this.''
Maxine Isaacs, a former aide to then-Senator Walter Mondale who teaches politics at the Kennedy School, said she inteprets the close Bush-Gore vote as a sign that Americans weren't very passionate about or against either of them.
''Americans aren't in a hurry, or feel any compulsion, to get them into office,'' Isaacs said. ''There is no sense we are suffering while they aren't serving, and we are aware that we have a president to Jan. 20.''
But some share the concern of Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, that the longer the election is in limbo, the less legitimate the new president will seem when he arrives in Washington.
Collins said she can't predict how the situation will end, but she said what is happening in Florida does not inspire confidence.
US Representative William Delahunt, a Democrat from Quincy, said he is confident that the electoral process will produce a president. In 1996, Delahunt went to court to protest computer errors in counting punch-card ballots and won his primary in a hand recount.
''This is not about Al Gore or George Bush; it's about the electoral system, and celebrating the fact that it works,'' Delahunt said. ''I think we should pause for a moment and let our institutions work. If we do, we will have a better result.''
