1.   In many states the number of blank and spoilt votes exceeded the number of valid votes cast.

2.   And, the court could decide to get involved in such ground-level detail such as what constitutes a valid vote.

3.   But a count of all valid Florida votes under court supervision will have great influence with the American public once it is delivered.

4.   Election workers in that county discovered valid votes for Gore and Bush among their over-votes after the election.

5.   It then assigned these ballots to Bush or Gore according to the percentage of valid votes each candidate received in the precinct where the rejected ballots were cast.

6.   Palm Beach has so far not found that most of those ballots are valid votes.

7.   Standards differ about what constitutes a valid vote.

8.   The court was vague about how recounts would be conducted and, once again, left it unclear what constituted a valid vote.