You either misremember or misrepresent WaPo’s reporting.

> In all likelihood, George W. Bush still would have won Florida and the presidency last year if either of two limited recounts -- one requested by Al Gore, the other ordered by the Florida Supreme Court -- had been completed, according to a study commissioned by The Washington Post and other news organizations.

> But if Gore had found a way to trigger a statewide recount of all disputed ballots, or if the courts had required it, the result likely would have been different. An examination of uncounted ballots throughout Florida found enough where voter intent was clear to give Gore the narrowest of margins.

So on this basis, GP has the right of it: Gore probably won that election.

I was actually thinking of a much later CNN retrospective looking at various studies: https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/31/politics/bush-gore-2000-elect... (“Taken as a whole, the recount studies show Bush would have most likely won the Florida statewide hand recount of all undervotes. Undervotes are ballots that did not register a vote in the presidential race.”).

The studies showed that Gore only would have won if counting over votes, which his team never pursued: “The studies also show that Gore likely would have won a statewide recount of all undervotes and overvotes, which are ballots that included multiple votes for president and were thus not counted at all. However, his legal team never pursued this action.”

Maybe if Gore had asked for a statewide hand recount the result would have been different. But instead he tried to stochastically cheat through selective recounts, which burned a huge amount of time on a process that was fundamentally unsound.