IAMI - Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris will certify the state's election results this evening. But that won't mean that anything about this contest will then be certain.
Indeed, the uncertainties seem likely to continue to layer and grow through the week. Such has been the story of the 2000 election since its last, fevered days of campaigning: Just when it seems as if the path ahead is clear, new recount results, new legal action, new court decisions, new technicalities, and new threats rise up to obscure the view.
In the background is the dominant principle, first expressed by Benjamin Disraeli but applicable to the forces on both sides of this bitter battle: ''Damn your principles! Stick to your party.''
Both candidates seem animated by and committed to the same core conviction as they prepare to confront the uncertainties that grow out of this evening's certification deadline: He who compromises is lost - and has lost.
Meanwhile, both campaigns are facing bruising pressure from within their own parties - some of it to bring this remarkable campaign overtime to a close, most of it to press on no matter what the cost and no matter how long it takes.
Amid all these uncertainties is one remarkable, undisputed but long-ignored fact that is the subtle soundtrack of everything in the entire count-and-recount tango here in Florida, whose 25 electoral votes are the remaining prize in the race for the presidency:
No one will ever know for certain who got more votes in this state.
The most astonishing aspect of the struggle here after Election Day is how sturdy and widely held is that consensus. Despite all the rhetoric and ripostes, no one is arguing that a true measure of the intentions of Floridians will ever be ascertained. The fight is merely over which side can make the most plausible case that it ought to get the electoral votes that mean the White House.
We are wandering in the margin of error of democracy.
Bush has clung to a small lead - sometimes as few as 300 votes, never more than 1,000 - for nearly three weeks. His supporters are quite sure that by nightfall Harris will be in a position to certify him the winner of Florida - and, thus, of the entire race. But Democrats are holding out hopes that disputed and so-called ''dimpled'' ballots will provide the vice president with a small margin of victory.
If Gore remains behind after Harris's certification, he retains the option of challenging the results in both Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties. But though Gore began a weekend offensive to rally his supporters to his cause and to the notion of continuing the fight, some leading Democrats are arguing that the vice president will soon have used up his options - and the public's patience - and expect to urge him to concede.
That is the apparent advantage, along with the slender vote lead, that Bush holds. In a state this big, with uncertainties this large, the Texas governor's position is not substantially different from Gore's, and yet there are no similar pressures on Bush to make a graceful exit.
In the background remain lawsuits and the shadow of the US Supreme Court, which will hear on Friday a Bush challenge to the recounts and the Florida Supreme Court order that affirmed their place in tonight's certified tally. The US court's surprising willingness to take up this case is generally viewed as a heartening sign for Bush. Yet it is possible that, depending on the certified results, the appeal to justices in Washington could be a major tactical blunder.
If Bush remains ahead and is certified the winner today, for example, the Texas governor would seem to be in a strong position to declare himself the winner, to appeal for public support for his presidency, and to maneuver Gore into the position of having to concede or be branded a sore loser. But the Supreme Court filings and oral arguments could keep the election story - and Gore's hopes - alive through the end of the week.
They also provide Gore with five additional days to argue that the recount in Miami-Dade, which ceased last week, should begin anew. He may well make that appeal in an address his campaign said he would make tomorrow.
Right now neither side looks from the outside as if it is preparing, or even thinking much, about giving in. Part of that is tactical; the campaigns have concluded that any open show of weakness, any display of hesitation, would injure their causes as the recounts continue and as the lawyers haggle.
But part of it is also the simple byproduct of the hardened positions they are taking. The campaigns appear like nothing so much as the two sides in a campaign of a different sort at Verdun during World War I: fatigued, immobile, desperate, fixed tragically in their positions.
And so the two sides will soldier on, certainly for a few more days, possibly for a week or more. Each fights on in the belief that the other might buckle, or that the other's escape routes might disappear, or that the other's options might evaporate - and because now, after almost 20 days of fighting a battle like no other in history, they do not know what else to do.
