The Palm Beach Board's uncompleted manual count resulted in a total of 8,222 uncounted votes.

But election officials said the complete result could not give the president outright victory because there were too few uncounted votes outstanding.

Punch cards, for example, are statistically more likely to produce uncounted votes than lever machines.

The recount has not, so far at least, shown the bounty of uncounted votes for Mr. Gore that his campaign workers had expected.

Then, a few days later, officials at the Board of Elections announced that they had found 42,000 uncounted votes.

"Thousands of uncounted votes could obviously make a difference."

And there are more than enough uncounted votes to decide the outcome of this election.

With some votes still uncounted, union officials said that Mr. Toussaint would win with slightly less than 50 percent of the vote.

Election night ends in a draw, with one vote uncounted.

The latest tally showed the congress behind by 5 percentage points, with about half the vote still uncounted.