THIS IS HISTORY WE'RE LIVING TODAY

NEW YORK -- I have a friend in Paris named Constance Borde, the wife of a distinguished French lawyer, Dominique Borde. Connie is a force of nature, always ready to do whatever it takes for her family and her party, the Democratic Party of the United States of America.

She was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, not from her native state of Massachusetts, but from Democrats Abroad, which sends a handful of people back home each four years to represent the 3 million American expatriates everywhere in the world. (Republicans have a similar operation, called Republicans Abroad International.) In this election, she was beating the drums across Europe to register Democrats abroad and make sure they sent absentee ballots to their home states.

I must admit that, even though my wife was a delegate from Democrats Abroad back in 1988, I was amused by Connie's efforts and passion. What difference could it make, thought I.

Well, now it is conceivable that the votes Connie -- and her Republican counterparts -- rousted out in the far corners of the world could decide this election. The FWABs -- that is Federal Write-In Absentee Ballots available at U.S. embassies and consulates -- of the more than 2,000 Floridians living abroad are among the votes that have still not been counted in this closest of all American elections.

Personally, I would love to see Connie Borde and her crowd decide the election, but that probably is not going to happen, because absentee ballots and especially absentee ballots from abroad are usually from Republicans -- corporate types and military officers. Maybe Republicans Abroad will make the difference. The point is, of course, that one vote can still make a difference. The pleasure of this election is seeing that happen -- almost -- and to see and hear people on the street and in stores talking and arguing about, of all things, politics.

Once a few years ago, when we voted in the village of Sag Harbor out on the end of Long Island, my wife and I were leaving our home to vote for mayor at the firehouse, and we noticed in the fine print of the local paper, the Sag Harbor Express, that the candidate we planned to vote for, our dentist, was equivocal about what he would do about developing or preserving a farm property just down the road from us. Coming home, we talked; we had both voted against our guy. And that night, when they counted the votes, he lost by one vote. We were the difference.

Just about the same thing is now happening nationally. The odds against what happened in this election must be millions to one.

The great achievement of American democracy, of any democracy, is the peaceful transfer of power. Holding elections is easy, as we see around the world. But getting the winners to step down when their terms are up is the hard part. There was something new and great when the general of our revolution, George Washington, went home after two terms as president. There was something great about Richard Nixon's decision not to protest the results in the close election of 1960 when he had reason to believe that his defeat by John F. Kennedy might have involved voter fraud in a couple of states. Vice President Gore was never more impressive than Wednesday night when he talked about the Constitution and not his great hurt at the possibility that more of us voted for him than for George W. Bush, but he might not be the president-elect -- not if Bush won enough states to win in the Electoral College.

We may want to change the rules next time. The Electoral College was, in fact, designed to be anti-democratic. Washington and the other Founding Fathers were very nervous about the democratic experiment they fostered more than two centuries ago. They worried about the passions of the mob -- even if the mob then was mainly white male property owners -- so they designated "electors" to translate the will of the people into power months after the election. The idea was to wait out the passion; "the better people" might want to overrule voters.

We're past that now. Let's hope we're all better people. The democratic experiment has succeeded here. Win or lose, it is thrilling this time to be a part of history -- and maybe we'll get them next time. That's why we like to call it a great country.