Vote total drops slightly for Gore in Iowa

Democrat presidential candidate Al Gore’s lead in the Iowa election has been cut by a few thousand votes from Tuesday’s total. Eric Bakker, spokesman for the Iowa Secretary of State, says new tallies are being released this morning after the counting of 12-hundred absentee ballots from Lucas County.Gore and republican candidate George W-Bush are now separated in Iowa by 31-hundred-15 votes. The margin had been about 52-hundred on Election Night. (As said above) The new totals are still now official but show Gore/Lieberman: 633,906 and Bush/Cheney: 630,791. Bakker says his office has not been contacted about a recount, not yet at least.The new tally shows more than one-point-three million Iowans cast ballots Tuesday, which Bakker says is very close to setting a new record.That’s a 72-percent turnout. The previous presidential election in 1996 saw 70-percent. The record was set in 1992’s presidential election when a little over one-point-three-million Iowans voted.