NEW YORK - A comprehensive study of disputed Florida ballots from the 2000 presidential election shows that George W. Bush would have won even if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed a recount of the votes to proceed, The New York Times reported on Sunday on its Web site.

The ten-month study conducted for a consortium of eight news organizations, including The New York Times, found that Bush would have retained a slender margin over Democratic candidate Al Gore if the Florida Supreme Court's order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the nation's highest court.

Even under the strategy that Gore pursued at the beginning of the Florida standoff -- filing suit to force hand recounts in four predominantly Democratic counties -- Bush would have kept his lead, according to the study.

The results also show that even if Gore had succeeded in his effort to force recounts of undervotes or ballots on which the machines could not discern a preference for president in the four Democratic counties, he still would have lost, although by 225 votes rather than 537.

But the review by the consortium found that Gore might have won if the courts had ordered a full statewide recount of all the rejected ballots, the newspaper said.

The media study, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago for the consortium, examined 175,010 ballots that vote-counting machines had rejected last November, the newspaper said.

The White House said on Sunday that Americans had put the hotly contested and divisive 2000 election behind them.

"The American people moved on a long time ago and this latest media recount was an expensive undertaking that turned up additional inconclusive data," said White House spokeswoman Nicolle Devenish. "The election was settled last year and Americans have moved on."

Under orders of the Florida Supreme Court, state officials began a hand recount of dispute ballots on Dec. 9. But the recount was halted that same afternoon when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in a 5-to-4 vote, that a statewide recount under varying standards threatened "irreparable harm" to Bush.

The consortium's study shows Bush would have won even if the justices had not stepped in, according to the Times.

However the newspaper said the media ballot review was unlikely to end the debate over the outcome of the 2000 election. The race was so close that it was possible to get different results simply by applying different hypothetical vote-counting methods to the thousands of uncounted ballots, the newspaper said.

In addition, the review also found statistical support for the complaints of many voters, mostly elderly Democrats, who blamed confusing ballot designs for leading them to vote for more than one candidate, according to the Times.

More than 113,000 voters cast ballots for two or more presidential candidates. Of those, 75,000 chose Gore and a minor candidate" 29,000 chose Bush and a minor candidate. Because there was no clear indication of what the voters intended, those numbers were not included in the consortium's final tabulations, the report said.

Bush's narrow win in Florida gave him the state's 25 Electoral College votes, one more than the 270 needed to be elected president. Nampa-Reuters