When he arrived, Sasso was told that there were problems with the machines, as Gore lawyers tried to demonstrate at the certification contest trial this weekend.

For example, he said, "we found a half dozen precincts where there were 20 to 25 dimples in a row.".

But he said the recount was "fair," at least in its scrupulousness. A "highly partisan" Republican judge on the canvassing board, Robert Rosenberg, ended up about two-thirds of the votes that the Democratic member thought had voted for Gore, Sasso said.

But, he acknowledged, perception of fairness is relative. For example, many Americans cast votes for candidates of both parties. Was it fair to give a dimpled Gore chad to Gore merely because the voter had selected other Democratic candidates?

"A lot of people are ticket-splitters," Sasso said.

Baker, a lawyer at the white-shoe Boston firm Hill and Barlow, laid out the Democrats' legal argument. The night of the election, he was in the Nashville "boiler room," as he called it, watching exit polls and coordinating with field operations in states.

Three states merited scrutiny. One was Florida. Reports of voter confusion in Palm Beach County were rampant, he said. When the first wave of exit polls were released about 1 p.m., Baker and his team began to map out strategy for the days ahead. (Published reports later revealed that a telemarketing firm hired by Democrats urged voters in the county to complain if they felt disenfranchised.)