I agree, there should be a hand recount of the entire state. There should have been one in Florida in 2000 as well, I did not agree at all with Gore's strategy. It's worth noting that Bush opposed a statewide hand recount in 2000 as well, however.
The Bush strategy, not that I agree with it, but one that made sense from a tactical point of view, is that they had a high level of confidence that the US Supremes would toss out a PARTIAL recount where they cherry picked states.
It should be noted the ORIGINAL Florida supreme's ruling that allowed the Gore Cherry Pick strategy was vacated by the US Supremes 9-0 after about 20 minutes of debate - the Florida Supremes were just plain wrong.
(I must say I lost every shred of respect for the Florida Supremes after their original ruling - it was just so blatently partisan. - Let's look for more votes, but only in Counties Gore won Big...?)
After the Bush team got a ruling that a partial recount would be vacated, they basically tried to run out the clock. They were ahead in the count and the Safe Harbour provisions clock in USC Title 3 was ticking...
If Gore has said from day one said:
"It's 537 votes out of 6 million, let's recount the entire state using the rules that pre-existed on election day" - hell I would have sent him some money to help cover the legal expense..
When he went to his cherry pick county strategy I though he was a partisan hack trying to steal the election and lacked the moral values and intellectual honesty needed to deserve to be President...
I don't agree with Gore's strategy at all, but according to Jeff Greenfield's book, the Gore team's logic was to ask for recounts in only a few counties rather than the entire state, in the hopes that since those recounts would take less time and involve a smaller area, they would have a higher chance of being approved than an entire statewide count. In addition, there were a far greater number of undervotes and irregularities in those counties. Of course, those also just happened to be the most Democratic counties in the state, so you can make of that whatever you'd like.
I was merely pointing out that Bush did NOT support a fall statewide manual recount. Gore did say that he supported one, but since Bush didn't, he was hoping that a partial recount of only part of the state would be an acceptable compromise. As I said, I don't agree with the strategy either, Gore should have demanded a full statewide manual count.
