According to Salon's last tally of the media recount, using the most liberal standards, Vice President Al Gore had moved ahead by 96 votes. But using the Post's tally, Bush would regain the lead by 78 votes. That's because accepting the Post's tally means excluding the partial-recount numbers from Miami-Dade that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered the state to certify.

Confusing? It will only get more so on Friday, when the Miami Herald is expected to release the results from its review of undervotes in 50 counties, including Miami-Dade, just one day before Bush is sworn in as the 43rd president of the United States.

The Herald has joined forces with USA Today to count the state's 46,000 undervotes. Their efforts will be followed by a group of media organizations -- including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and New York Times -- that are planning a separate count of all of the state's contested undervotes.

Earlier recounts conducted by the Tampa Tribune and Orlando Sentinel showed a cumulative gain of 250 votes for Gore in Lake and Hillsborough counties.

Like the Tampa Tribune's tally of punch-card ballots in Hillsborough, the Post's Miami-Dade numbers included the controversial dimpled chads. "If everything were counted -- from the faintest dimple to chads barely hanging on ballots -- 251 additional votes would have gone to Bush and 245 more would have gone to Gore," the Post wrote.

Taken together, the three media recounts would diminish Bush's lead to 293 votes. If you include the votes the Florida Supreme Court ruled should have been included in the final count -- 215 additional votes the vice president gained in Palm Beach County that were disallowed by Secretary of State Katherine Harris because they were late, Bush's lead would be slashed to 78 votes.

But the disagreements over recount numbers are likely to grow on Friday when the Herald releases its numbers. Up until now, there has been no overlap in the counties media organizations have targeted for their own recounts. But when the Herald numbers are released on Friday, there may well be conflicting sets of numbers coming from the same county. And the chaos could increase when individual members of the media consortium release their own numbers.

In addition, partisan groups such as Democrats.com and the conservative group Judicial Watch are also involved in their own recounts in scattered counties across the state.

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