By Scot Lehigh, Globe Staff, 11/12/2000

The Western mind craves fairness and certainty, and it's our American conceit that democratic elections ensure both.

But Election Day has dealt a sharp blow to that idea, for whatever the outcome of the presidential vote, we're unlikely to have either - and we definitely won't have both.

To be certain of voters' intent in this muddled election would require a new vote in Palm Beach County. But a second ballot - in the national spotlight, with self-conscious voters knowing the stakes - would necessarily skew the process, and fall short of a fair representation of what happened Tuesday. Thus, certainty sacrifices fairness.

Perhaps the closest we could come to what we, as a nation, consider fairness (in the abstract, not partisan, sense) would be if the official recount results and outstanding

overseas ballots put Al Gore on top. Controversial as that would be, he is, after all, the winner (so far) of the popular vote, and there's a good chance that the disputed Palm Beach ballots would, if properly cast, have tipped the race in his favor.

But that is guesswork. The Palm Beach controversy has destroyed any chance at true certainty. What constitutes a confusing ballot there is largely in the eye of the beholder (if voters can't follow a simple arrow, we'd best embark on an urgent effort to revamp our one-way-street signs), but the county's 19,120 double-punched ballots do speak to an elevated level of befuddlement.

Somewhat less compelling is the argument that many of the 3,407 votes Reform Party candidate Patrick Buchanan received should really belong to Gore; given that almost 17,000 people in Palm Beach are registered to the Reform Party or its offshoots, it doesn't defy belief that Buchanan got one-fifth of those registrants.

Still, an honest evaluation suggests this conclusion: If the 19,120 voters who double-punched their ballots had had their true choice recorded, Gore would have overcome George W. Bush's lead of 327 votes in the unofficial Florida state recount.

Our newly famous electors. C2

Certainly if you award Gore and Bush the same percentages of those discarded votes that they garnered in Palm Beach County overall, Gore would have won the state, its 25 electoral votes and thus the presidency. That remains true even if Bush carries three-quarters of the outstanding absentee ballots, the estimated number of which ranges from 2,000 to 5,700.

But now for the hard part: Even if that were a consensus conclusion, and it certainly isn't, what, exactly, can be done to determine whether it's true?

No judge or commission could make that declaration; that would be unacceptable in a democracy. The only possible remedy would be holding a second election in Palm Beach. That's an idea with understandable appeal to Gore supporters, which is why William Daley, his campaign chairman, hinted at it last week. Yet that's precisely where certainty and fairness collide most violently, for it's impossible to hold a second vote without radically changing the context in which citizens would go to the polls.

Consider the questions. Who would get to revote? Everyone in the county?

If so, Florida would, in some cases, be granting a second chance to citizens too lightly motivated to vote until the stakes became astronomical. That's simply not fair to citizens, be they in Florida or Alaska, who cared enough to vote on Election Day.

Well, what if a new election were limited to those Palm Beach County citizens who voted initially?

At first blush, that remedy sounds plausible. But then, what about the Ralph Nader supporters?

Nader's 5,564 Palm Beach County voters went into the booth thinking he had a shot of winning the 5 percent he needed nationally to qualify the Green Party for federal financing.

Now they know that's an impossibility this year, which means it's probable a good number would switch to Gore. That would hardly be fair to Bush because it would change the circumstances and likely alter the outcome.

It would also effectively offer the citizens of Palm Beach County a runoff election while the rest of the state - and the 49 others - had to settle for the normal plurality-prevails balloting.

Theoretically, it might be possible to subtract Nader's second tally from his first, adjust the result for any decline in voter turnout, then net it from Gore's second total - but would voters really understand, or approve, that kind of mathematical machination?

Any way you slice it, then, what we're left with is a result that is neither certain nor fair - and where any post-recount attempt to increase surety can't help but come at the expense of equity.

So here's the one thing you can know is true: No matter which man becomes president, millions of Americans will view him as a pretender who managed to claim a prize that rightly belongs to his rival.

Fortunately, for those voters who crave clarity, last week's balloting did produce clear winners and losers - overlooked, mostly in the chaos surrounding the Oval Office race. Here's a review:

Net gains

Despite the dot.com crash, the Internet came into its own in Election 2000, and not just from the candidate Web sites. Sites set up by the TV networks got up to 4 million hits daily.

The crowning moment? When NBC's Tom Brokaw got Clay Roberts, director of the Florida Division of Elections, on the phone to query him about voting results. Brokaw offered to stay on the line while Roberts's team finished the count. No need, Roberts told America's premier anchorman, he'd just post the results on his agency's Web page.

That was hardly the Internet's only role. In the Gore campaign, Massachusetts uber-operative Michael Whouley, closely monitoring those results on the Web, made the call that aborted Gore's concession speech.

In the Texas governor's mansion, Jeb Bush was hunched over a computer, searching the Web for voting results as he tried to make good his pledge to deliver his state for Brother W.

When all the absentee ballots are counted, another victory for new technology may come in Washington state, where Internet executive Maria Cantwell, a Democrat, has a decent chance to oust US Senator Slade Gorton, a two-term Republican. At week's end, both sides were awaiting absentee ballots.

Impeachment impalement

In a pre-election quack, lame-duck President Clinton said congressional Republicans owed him an apology for impeaching him. While it's a stretch to say the public agreed, it's nevertheless true that some of Mr. Clinton's tormentors met the sorts of fate suffered by the teen cast of ''Final Destination.''

US Representative Bill McCollum, one of the House impeachment managers, was defeated seeking a US Senate seat in Florida. In California, James Rogan, another of the House prosecutors, lost his congressional seat.

And in Arkansas, Jay Dickey, a Republican who voted for impeachment, lost after Clinton made a trip to the state on behalf of former aide Mike Ross, who was running in the home district of the man from Hope.

Must-see TV

All of the TV networks had egg on their faces on election night, but at least NBC whipped the electoral-map albumen into an informational omelet. When in the wee hours Florida was, for the second time, put back into the undecided column, Brokaw and company went to work. Brokaw queried Roberts and the Florida attorney general about the actual margin, the number of absentee votes still outstanding, and what state law said about a recount.

Result: While NBC's competitors were still dealing in rumor and speculation, NBC was imparting the closest thing there was to fact. It was a bravura performance under pressure.

Winning women

US Senator-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton stole most of the headlines, but election night was a pretty good one for women, who increased their numbers in the Senate by at least three and possibly four, depending on the outcome of the Washington contest.

To be sure, Jean Carnahan will arrive from Missouri in circuitous fashion, appointed to replace her dead (and victorious) husband, Mel, who died in an October plane crash.

In Michigan, Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat, ousted one-term Republican Spencer Abraham.

If Cantwell wins, that foursome would tie the highest distaff gain, which came in 1992.

''It was the year of the woman when it happened before,'' says Ellen Malcolm, president of Emily's List, which helps Democratic women office-seekers. ''And these women won in some of the toughest races in the country.''

Even if Cantwell loses, with Clinton, Carnahan, and Stabenow, women increase their numbers in the Senate by one-third, from nine to 12.

Meanwhile, women won two more governorships. In Montana, Judy Martz, a former Olympic speed skater who was lieutenant governor, won the top job. And in Delaware, Ruth Ann Minner, once a receptionist in the governor's office, also made the jump from lieutenant governor.

Voucher dowsers

The last two years have been encouraging ones for those who think competition from private schools can both improve public education and offer inner-city students an escape from failing schools. The movement has gathered energy, supporting evidence, and important converts. In the last few months alone, a serious new study documented the gains for black voucher students, and Democratic intellectual Robert Reich, the former Labor secretary, offered a creative progressive voucher plan to focus private schools on taking poorer children.

But Tuesday was a bad day indeed. In California, voters overwhelmingly rejected a ballot proposal to offer a $4,000 voucher to all students. And in Michigan, a more narrowly drawn proposition that would have granted vouchers to students in failing schools also went down to defeat.

The results demonstrated that for all the putative progress, the public still isn't sold on tapping the forces of competition to remedy educational mediocrity.

Local laurels

Governor Paul Cellucci can count himself among Tuesday's victors. His tax cut passed easily, giving state residents the biggest income tax break ever. After a 1988 reduction, Cellucci likened himself to Sammy Sosa. Now he's the Sultan of Tax-cutting Swat.