In the Washington case, the first recount, which was simply running the punch cards through the machines a second time, didn't change the leader, but it did tighten the count. The Democrat then called for a manual recount, and that put her in the lead -- for the win -- by 133 votes (or thereabout). I was an observer during the recount and the manual recount was almost certainly more accurate than the original machine counts. There were plenty of punch cards with chad problems that it was easy to see how the machine could have miscounted, but upon careful visual inspection showed the clear intent of the voter.

I think anyone who participates in an election has every right to exhaust every legal and legitimate step in finalizing a vote count. The truth is that in an election with millions of votes and a margin of fewer than a couple of hundred votes, there may be no way to guarantee that the real winner is identified -- especially using punch cards. We've done away with punch cards now, so no more hanging or dimpled chads, but it is still amazing how creative people can be in disguising what their true intent was. People simply don't take voting seriously enough.

Everyone should probably vote on a practice ballot first and when they are sure they have their votes exactly the way they want them, transfer their marks to the final ballot.

If Coleman (who I despise) were a few hundred or even a thousand votes behind Franken, I think he would owe it to himself and his supporters to exhaust the legal procedures in place to determine as well as humanly possible who the winner is. I don't think anyone should ever even consider conceding until the process is complete.