As the struggle over dimpled chads and voting machines grinds on, evidence is emerging that the US presidential race was irrevocably tainted before a single ballot was cast - by the systematic and unconstitutional denial of voting rights to thousands of black Floridians.
Across Florida, black residents who had taken part in earlier elections without any problems went to vote on November 7th to find a bewildering array of hurdles between them and the ballot box. For many, the day's events were a reminder that Florida is an integral part of the deep south, with a long record of segregation and resistance to black voting rights.
The state is under investigation by the US justice department for infringing the rights of its minority citizens.
Ballots cast can be recounted and yield quick results, while votes denied are difficult to measure and hard to claim. In the longer term, they have far graver implications for race relations and the health of American democracy.
Marvin Davies, a veteran of the 1960s civil rights struggle said: "Florida has always been a microcosm of hate . . . Both racism and hate are a very viable part of this culture."
During the presidential campaign, it became clear that Florida would be pivotal and that civil rights groups were making unprecedented efforts to mobilise minority voters. Under the banner of an anti-fraud campaign, Governor Jeb Bush and his now famous secretary of state, Ms Katherine Harris, implemented a series of administrative steps which may well prove to have swung the election.
In June, the division of elections in Ms Harris's office drew up a list of more than 700,000 Floridians permanently disqualified from voting - more than any other state - because of a criminal past, and sent it to county election supervisors.
The idea was to enforce strictly an 1868 law disqualifying felons and ex-felons from voting for life. The law was originally part of the southern backlash against voter registration among freed slaves after the Civil War, and was based on the assumption that black residents got in trouble with the law more often than their white counterparts.
That assumption holds true today, in a state where African Americans make up 13 per cent of the population but 55 per cent of prison inmates. According to Human Rights Watch, more than a third of African American men in the state were disqualified because of a past conviction, mostly resulting from the "war on drugs" which has been raging in urban America for two decades.