With stadium financing trailing by 1,535 votes, officials still have to count about 3,000 remaining absentee ballots.

In the end, Mr. Sabrin won just 5 percent of the vote, about 114,000 ballots.

Franklin County, the largest in the district, recorded about 21,000 provisional ballots, 2,600 of which were disqualified.

Election officials in Gadsden County counted by hand about 2,124 ballots that had been rejected by the counting machine.

When the counters finished their work on Nov. 22, there were still about 10,500 disputed ballots that the canvassing board had to count itself.

When they finished their work on Wednesday, there were still about 10,500 questionable ballots that canvassing board members had to count themselves.

Mr. Robertson also won in a separate count of about 300 ballots cast by non-Iowans.

Out of the 43,536,028 registered voters, about 35.4 million ballots were cast giving a voter turn-out of 81.4%.

At the magistrate's office here about 500 ballots were cast today, compared with about 1,500 on each of the previous two days.

This week the United States came within about 136,000 ballots of having another president who was not the choice of the most voters.