Will dimpled chad smile on Gore?
By Julian Borger in Washington WITH Floridas Supreme Court giving a verdict on hand recounts and setting a deadline yesterday, a hotly contested ground war in the three disputed counties focused on the arcane but potentially crucial issue of “dimpled or “pregnant chad. The manual vote counts in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Broward counties are producing far fewer gains for Al Gore than the Democrats had expected. But several thousand ballots have been set aside as “questionable because the voter did not fully punch through the ballot paper, leaving an indentation rather than a hole alongside the name of a candidate. The small, perforated, rectangular plug, or chad, remains attached but protruding and is described as pregnant or as merely dimpled. Democrats believe that if the voters intention is to be measured, these indentations should be counted and they believe that the majority of them would be votes for the Vice-President. As manual recounts proceed, that might be the only way Mr
