"Everyone is hysterical here," said Minette Leichman, a 15-year resident in the community and a member of the huge Jewish population in South Florida that voted Gore-Lieberman in massive numbers. "We think all our votes went down the drain."Retrieving ballots from the U-bend is what may or may not now happen.A hand-count of 1 per cent of all the votes cast will be undertaken today, on the insistence of the Democratic Party. And final certification of the county numbers, under court order, will be delayed until Tuesday. Without a court ruling for a revote, however, it seems unlikely that the 19,000 votes thrown away will ever be salvaged.Many in West Palm Beach, as witnessed by the demonstrations outside the elections supervisor's offices on Thursday, will not be satisfied until a revote is held.And they are not all old or Jewish. This is a more mixed community than the uniformity of the majestic palm trees in the city would suggest There are young people and middle-class people. And a very large community of blacks too."Something in the milk ain't right," was the observation of Joe Melvin, a roofer and an African American who could be found yesterday morning resting on a bench with a can of Heineken.

He lives a few blocks from the gleaming downtown of West Palm Beach, in an incongruously scruffy neighbourhood of dwellings that almost qualify as shanties.Not that Mr Melvin has much of a voice Once convicted on drugs charges, he is barred from voting But he knows what should happen. They should vote in the county all over again.Joseph Paine, a handyman, agrees He didn't bother to vote on Tuesday. Will he vote if the county is allowed to hold elections again? "I think we would all vote now," he said, sweeping his hand at the surrounding homes. For Gore, of course.If this neighbourhood is the wrong side of the tracks, all of West Palm Beach is the wrong side of the water. You need to cross a bridge to the slither of land in the Atlantic where you will find Palm Beach proper, a Disneyesque fantasy of extremely fine living. Giant mansions hide behind weeping fig hedges, jewellery boutiques line the shopping avenues and all the cars are of the European luxury variety.Howard Baur, 73, is not yet in the Zimmer brigade. Instead he rides, albeit a little unsteadily, to the Publix supermarket to do a little shopping once a week He did, however, make a mess of his voting card on Tuesday.

The instructions told him to push the so-called "butterfly ballot", which had candidates' names on either side of the holes that had to be punched through with a needle, all the way into the metal holder. He pushed a little too enthusiastically and it crumpled.His story is a bit different from those we have been hearing of officials rushing people to vote, refusing to give confused citizens a second chance and even turning some away for arriving too late "I called them to give a new one and they did immediately. It was no problem, they couldn't have been nicer," Mr Baur said yesterday.The front entrance to Publix is a bit of a gathering place for old fogies on a sunny morning. With Howard, there was Ed and Russ, not to mention Howard's dog, Jesse. They were as animated as anyone in town about the election fiasco.

But they were clear that Bush had won here fair and square and everyone should quit their whining."There was nothing wrong with the ballots," insisted Ed. "Those people just don't read properly or they weren't paying attention. What happened was their fault and nobody else's."Try telling that to the more Democrat-minded residents of The Fountains. It is one thing understanding what do with a ballot that seemed confusing. It is another when your votes get vaporised by an election official who was careless or worse..

When the story of this rollercoaster US presidential election is written in the history books, spare a thought for the humble wire service reporters of the Associated Press in the state of Florida. When the story of this rollercoaster US presidential election is written in the history books, spare a thought for the humble wire service reporters of the Associated Press in the state of Florida. For when the stars of the US television networks were announcing - wrongly - victory for George W Bush, based on projections in the cliffhanger state, Associated Press did not declare a winner.At that crucial moment, at 0620 GMT on Wednesday, newsrooms across the world stopped reading the wire, and trusted the words of Dan Rather, who called the election for Bush amid intense media competition to be first to announce the winner. "If you're disgusted with us, frankly, I don't blame you," the CBS anchor told viewers in the hours that followed as it became clear the election was still a toss-up.But earlier on election night, all the US media - including Associated Press - had quoted exit poll projections in Florida at 0049 GMT to announce that Vice-President Gore had won the "sunshine state".This has enraged the US Congress, on the grounds that the premature announcement of a Gore victory in Florida may have discouraged voters from turning out elsewhere in the country. The chairman of the House Commerce Telecommunications Sub-committee, Bill Tauzin, has sent letters to the heads of US television networks and to Associated Press, and is threatening hearings on the matter in the spring.Mr Tauzin said a depressed voter turn-out in the West may have had an impact on the House races in California and on the national popular presidential vote.