Last year the nation watched what seemed to be a never-ending non-election of the president. Then, after supreme intervention, it was over, the president was elected and Al Gore faced unemployment.

But it's sort of like dinner at a tourist-strip buffet joint. After gorging on the 24-hour chad reports, we fooled ourselves into thinking we can walk away, never to overindulge on vote analysis again. Months later, it's all a lie as we drift slowly to more in-depth reports and revelations about the vote (and undervotes and overvotes and stolen votes) in Florida.

Come, binge on never-empty platters served up by Alan Dershowitz, The New York Times, and The Miami Herald. The latter newspaper has published THE MIAMI HERALD REPORT: Democracy Held Hostage, described as "The Complete Investigation of the 2000 Presidential Election Including Results of the Independent Recount."

Martin Merzer and the Miami Herald staff, according to the report, traveled to every county in Florida to review ballots, yielding the independent recount. Although the book doesn't focus on the "winner" in that recount, just so you know --- it was George W. Bush.

Reports, studies, and video retrospectives of this amazing election will continue to be produced. But the Miami Herald report is the one for your shelf if you're a true contemporary historian and news junkie. Remember, the most exciting fights over the vote happened in South Florida, so they know it better than most of the media who covered the situation. And the report serves as a guide to the players and elements that created Florida's election debacle.

I found the chapter titled "Florida: State of the Union," particularly intriguing. In it the writers explain what Bush and Gore saw in Florida, a victory based on very different analyses of the state's voting public. They also detail how Florida's geography, demographics, and extraordinary growth impacted each party's chances. In Florida each candidate had to appeal to suburbanites, seniors, and people of color. And as with many things in Florida, particularly South Florida, they would have to woo Cuban-Americans.

Two important figures are profiled in their very own chapters. Katherine Harris, Florida's Secretary of State, and Theresa LePore, Palm Beach County's election supervisor and creator of the butterfly ballot. LePore's story leaves you with the impression that she is a sincere and dedicated public servant whose mistake garnered a place in history. Harris, whose bizarre notion that she was divinely chosen to serve during this time, doesn't fare as well. If she does run for Congress in 2002, this chapter will come in handy for her opponent(s).

Although this book is primarily politics and statistics, it's still quite interesting reading. Even if you were glued to cable news during our interregnum, you'll find some new information here as well as information the nation needs to prevent such days of uncertainty in the future. Do something good for your country --- read the report and find out if your elections office is as clueless as the Florida officials seem to be in hindsight. If so, watch out for more election crises in 2002 and 2004. Now that we know about such things, it is likely that we'll question discarded votes until the system improves enough to make them a true rarity.