WASHINGTON -- Politically, it's come down to a few numbers, which is why by Yogi Berra standards it ain't over. And it shouldn't be.
Legally, the US Supreme Court has agreed to hear the constitutional issues raised by those numbers. And it should.
But the number that matters most today is not 930, nor is it whatever happens to that figure by this morning or this evening. The number that matters most is, at a minimum, 157.
Bear with me. The figure 930 is what Governor George W. Bush's lead over Vice President Al Gore was last weekend before recounting by hand had been completed in the two South Florida counties where it was still going on.
As of this evening - one of two deadlines set by the Florida Supreme Court - that figure at a minimum will be a lot less than 930, and the Bush campaign remains afraid it might even end up on the plus side for Gore.
But the figure that matters most - 157 - is the number of net votes Gore had picked up in routine recounting by hand in Miami-Dade County as of the latest halt to the tabulation there on Tuesday by possibly the least decisive board of decision makers in the history of mankind.
To be technically more correct, the number should really be expressed as 157 + X + Y, where X is the number of votes Gore would have gained had all 614 precincts in the county been manually recounted and Y is the number of votes Gore would have gained if the 10,000 ballots in a separate pile that were kicked out without any tally at all by the machines were examined for clear evidence of voter intent.
To understand why it ain't over, imagine a situation where last weekend's Bush lead has dwindled to a figure of less than 157. That ''result'' would mean that Bush had a ''lead'' that was exceeded by ballots in Miami-Dade that had already been counted for Gore and then discarded.
And remember, a Gore gain of 157 votes as of last Tuesday through 135 precincts could be projected to a gain of at least 500 votes in the entire county. And that gain would have been supplemented by at least that many, and probably a good deal more, had Miami-Dade's board gone through the 10,000 additional votes without a machine count it had already set aside.
What this means politically is that every net vote by which last weekend's Bush margin drops highlights the significance of the Miami-Dade abdication and solidifies Democratic support for a Gore campaign drive to overturn it.
The numbers are important legally as well. They are a major reason that the Florida Supreme Court on Thanksgiving denied an emergency petition by Gore to order the county to count ''without prejudice.'' In English, the court saw no basis to order counting between then and this evening's recount deadline but is more than willing to consider it starting tomorrow, when the ''contest'' period under Florida law begins.
In its unanimous opinion last week, the court set today's deadline in order to leave a decent interval for contests between now and the real, drop-dead deadline of Dec. 12, when the states 25 electors need to have been officially designated for the Electoral College voting on Dec. 18.
The court also supplied the statutory language that governs manual recounts and contests of results. Regarding the former, the law says county canvassing boards ''shall'' order such recounts if a test shows ''error in the vote tabulation which could affect the outcome of an election.''
And regarding contests, the law says the grounds for them include ''rejection of a number of legal votes sufficient to change or place in doubt the result of the election.''
Nor is the Miami-Dade fiasco, appalling as it is, the only possible basis for contests. If Gore contests it and if he has come very close or even gone ahead based on the recounts of contested ballots in Broward and Palm Beach counties, the Bush campaign could be doing its own contesting.
Going into the weekend, for example, there were lawsuits in 14 counties involving the handling of the famous military ballots from overseas. And there were vociferous objections from Republican attorneys monitoring the recounts in Broward and Palm Beach that could easily end up as contests tomorrow morning.
Indeed, there remain more than enough controversies in Florida to justify a judicial determination that a hand count in all the state's precincts without voting machines was called for.
It is Gore who has been saying for nearly two weeks that he is willing to accept such an undertaking, for which there remains more than ample time, and it is Bush who continues to reject a statewide hand count, fearing the result.
It is Gore who has put all his eggs in the basket of Florida's election system; for him, this is over by Dec. 12. It is Bush who remains prepared to bring this mess up to Congress, where it could turn into a debacle. Bush is prepared to let Florida decide its own election only if he wins by his own definition.
Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com.
