Remember those hanging chads from the 2000 election? Some guy in Florida is selling them

Remember the closing drama in the 2000 presidential election? When officials in Palm Beach spent days trying to divine the intent of voters whose paper ballot punches were hanging by a thread? When the U.S. Supreme Court stopped a recount in the Land of Disney and George W. Bush was declared the victor there by 537 votes? When all the lawyers and journalists packed up and went back to Washington or California or Houston or wherever they had come from?

Jim Dobyns, a Republican political consultant, never forgot it. Ever since, he's wanted to own a piece of that history. It took him a long time to track them down but finally, four years ago, he found someone selling a warehouse full of those infamous Votomatic III voting machines that had caused all the trouble in the first place. Dobyns bought 1,200 of them and started selling them on eBay or through his website, for up to $75 each.

He called them "The Holy Grail of the 2000 Election." They were great conversation pieces. A lot of Democrats bought them as gifts.

Now, as Jessica Gresko reported for the Associated Press, Dobyns says he only has about 50 or 60 left in storage. And he's decided that in selling the machines, he missed another selling opportunity -- the chads! So he and his wife scooped up all the chads from their remaining machines (also the ones sprinkled around the house, in the cat's fur and in his blue Dodge Caravan) and are selling them. In Ziploc bags of 10 each. For $20 a bag, or maybe less at Christmas time.

"I'll never get them out of the van," Dobyns told Gresko. "And I don't want to get them out of the van because I see it and I think, 'That's cool.' "

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Steve Nesius/Associated Press