It's the Numbers, Stupid

Nobody's giving up as America's longest election continues and more questions arise. Will it all come down "dimples" and "chads"? What will make Bush or Gore admit the other guy's won? To discuss the twists and turns of recounts and court challenges, the credibility of our electoral process and stamina of voters, are a longtime Republican media consultant to congressional and gubernatorial races, professors of history and political science, and the directors of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, and the Pew Research Center.

• Newsmaker: The deadline for petitioning Florida's Secretary of State to approve counties' hand recounts of last week's election ballots has passed. Tim Padgett, Miami bureau chief for <

  Time Magazine, expounds on what he calls a "constitutional Elian crisis".

• Reporter's Notebook: With news like this, is parody still possible? Robert Siegal, editor-in-chief of

  theonion.com, a weekly satirical news parody, "unpeels" the struggle to satirize a process that's stranger than fiction.