The Miami Herald has reported that its count of uncounted ballots in four key Florida counties has left President Bush the winner of the presidency. Mr Al Gore, it says, would have netted no more than 49 votes if a manual recount of Miami-Dade's ballots had been completed - 140 too few to overcome Mr Bush's lead, even when added to Mr Gore's gains in the three other counties in which the Democratic candidate had requested manual recounts.
Of 10,644 punchcard ballots that the Miami-Dade elections office identified as undervotes - ballots bearing no machine readable vote for president - the review found that 1,555 bore some kind of marking that might be interpreted as a vote for Mr Gore. An additional 1,506 bore marks that might be interpreted as a Bush vote.
Meanwhile, Senator Hillary Clinton took yet another political hit from fallout from her husband's pardons spree yesterday with a report that her brother, Mr Hugh Rodham, was lobbying not for two pardons but for four, two unsuccessfully.
Last week, after pressure from his sister, he returned $400,000 in fees for lobbying successfully for Mr Carlos Vignali, the son of a prominent Californian businessman and Democratic contributor, who had been convicted on charges of transporting 800 lbs of cocaine; and that of Mr A. Glenn Braswell, a millionaire herbal-supplement marketer, convicted of fraud and perjury.
Yesterday's Washington Post quotes a Clinton White House source who says Mr Rodham spoke to lawyers in the counsel's office about Nora Lum and her husband, Eugene Kung Ho Lum, who had been convicted of making illegal campaign contributions to the Democrats, and specifically Senator Ted Kennedy. Mr Lun had also been convicted of tax fraud. Neither received clemency and it is not known if there was a financial transaction with Mr Rodham.
The Lums were introduced in 1992 to the Clintons by the late Ron Brown, then chairman of the Democratic National Committee, after which the millionaire couple moved to California from Hawaii to set up the Asian Pacific Advisory Council to mobilise the Asian vote and raise money for the party. By 1996, Ms Lum had visited the White House at least 18 times.
Official records show that the Lums and their related business interests gave the Democratic National Committee $66,000 in 1992. But there were charges that far more money was involved.
