The Showdown in Palm Beach.

Helen Halperin went into the voting booth intending to cast a ballot for Vice President Al Gore for President and instead voted for Pat Buchanan. It wasn't a last-second change of heart. The ballot in Palm Beach County, Florida, confused her, and she realized her error on her way home. "I was so troubled," says Halperin, 81. "But I thought, `One vote. How much could that count?'"

In this year's dead-heat election, when a few hundred Florida votes separated Gore and the Republican contender, George W. Bush, every vote mattered. And Halperin wasn't the only Palm Beach resident who claimed to have a problem with the so-called "butterfly ballot," which listed Gore and Buchanan on opposite sides of a single column of hole punches. (This ballot wasn't used in other counties.)

Buchanan, the ultra-conservative Reform Party candidate, received 3,407 votes in the heavily liberal and Democratic Palm Beach County, more than triple his support in any other county in the state. Buchanan himself says some of those votes were probably meant for Gore.

In addition, some 19,000 votes in the county weren't counted because voters punched more than one hole in the ballot. The election authorities consider the ballots votes for two candidates, and therefore invalid. But thousands of voters have complained that they meant to vote for Gore, voted for Buchanan accidentally, and then punched a second hole for Gore.

The Bush campaign points out that both political parties were able to review the ballot in advance, and no one complained then. Gore objects now because he "didn't like the outcome,"charges Bush campaign chairman Donald Evans.

But the Gore officials, who are pressing for a revote, say they only want to make sure the "will of the people" of Florida is done.

Florida courts could order a revote, but almost never do to avoid interfering with the voting process. However, Florida law does state that an election can be challenged on the basis of ballot design, or any cause that shows the voters' intentions had been frustrated. Halperin, for one, would say her's had.