Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris certified Florida election results Sunday, announcing Texas Gov. George W. Bush as the winner of the state’s 25 electoral votes.

With that announcement, some Americans have called for Vice President Al Gore to concede the election. However, it is still too early for Gore to concede.

Bush has a case pending in the U.S. Supreme Court, which will likely drag the issue on for another week or two whether Gore were to concede or not. Also, the Gore campaign is planning to file a lawsuit about the stopped hand recount in Miami-Dade County.

As for doing the “honorable” thing, it is too late for anybody to look like the hero in conceding this election.

In order to ensure accuracy and to make sure all votes count, there should be a hand recount of the entire state of Florida.

Until recently, hand counts were the standard in U.S. elections. Also, they are more accurate than a machine count. In fact, in some states such as Texas, law mandates that any recount in the state must be a hand recount.

A machine count is considered accurate as long as it is within the standard deviation, meaning that all machine counts are off by about 2 percent to 5 percent.

No two counts in the Florida election have ended with the same numbers. This in itself indicates a problem with the counting procedure.

If you count a pocketful of change and the numbers are different, you don’t just throw out the change. You keep counting until you get the same number twice. If we can do it for $3.50 in change, we can do it for the presidential election.

Our nation isn’t in any kind of peril. We still have a president. His name is Bill Clinton. This is not a Constitutional crisis. It is wearing to hear about the election constantly on news channels. But, there’s an easy solution to that problem. Change the channel. Forget about the drama in Florida. They’re still showing all your favorite TV programs.

Editorial Board:Carrie Tett, Greg Jerrett, Katie Goldsmith, Amie Van Overmeer, Andrea Hauser and Jocelyn Marcus.