here is something fitting about a disputed presidential election being decided in Florida, a state where so many trends that are shaping the nation's future intersect.
If the Election Day polls that showed Vice President Al Gore ahead in the Sunshine State turn out to be wrong, it will be simply because the state's politics are so varied and fast-changing that they defy easy prognostication.
What an election. If the result in Florida stands, a sitting vice president with the electoral gifts of peacetime and a booming economy will have lost to an opponent with no significant issues, no platform, and lots of fuzzy math on taxes and Social Security.
This election should be enough to put every reporter in America out of the prediction business. But it is safe to say that whether the Florida tally will hold is a significant question. Elderly voters in Palm Beach County have complained that they erroneously cast votes for Patrick J. Buchanan instead of Gore due to a type of punchcard ballot that has a potential for error. Tales of election irregularities abound as well.
A host of rumors of devious Election Day behavior, including reports of an uncounted box of ballots found on a riverbank in Miami, fell apart as the day wore on, gradually replaced by mounting bewilderment.
Unfortunately, suspicions of ill-executed elections in my home state have a certain currency. Like a lot of states below the Mason-Dixon Line, Florida has never been known for the purity of its politics. Dirty tricks were common until recently, and outright fraud - well, it's been known to happen.
Consider the infamous Miami mayoral election of 1997. The incumbent, Xavier Suarez, cheated and stole votes with such impunity that he was removed from office by a federal judge, who declared his opponent mayor.
In that election, fraud seemed the norm. Convicted felons voted in violation of state law; some people said their absentee ballots were filled out by campaign workers, and others swore absentee ballots were forged with their names. Nonresidents voted. Some voters were paid $10 and driven to the polls. Oh, yes, at least one dead man was found to have voted. None of it reinforces my faith in Tuesday's count.
Whether the recount will alter Texas Governor George W. Bush's slim lead obscures a larger political reality. It's too bad for the Democrats that an election that seemed so winnable ever came down to one make-or-break state to begin with.
Gore might well have won outright had Green Party candidate Ralph Nader not garnered a surprising 95,000 votes in Florida, where many of his issues, especially environmental, have historically been marginal.
But environmentalists have been energized by the constant onslaught of headaches caused by runaway population growth and by the planned $7.8 billion, 36-year cleanup of the Florida Everglades. Green is suddenly in, and anyone who cares about the environment in Florida has plenty of reason to hate both the Democrats and the Republicans, who have jointly presided over the 50-year plunder of Central and South Florida.
Politically, Florida is in near-constant flux - like a lot of the rest of the country, but more so. In the past couple of generations, it has been both a solid Democratic bastion and a Republican stronghold. Now, in this anti-ideological age, it's neither. It's anyone's to grab - never more dramatically than at this moment.
All the shouts and whispers of election shenanigans may prove to be nothing more than coffee-shop gossip. Let's hope so. Suddenly, it's not just Florida but the country that has a stake in making sure the count is honest. Not long ago, that would have been little short of a break with local tradition. But Florida is under scrutiny, and its election must pass the test.
Adrian Walker's e-mail address is walker@globe.com.
