TALLAHASSEE -- In the final seconds of the new HBO movie Recount, a box labeled ''Palm Beach County ballots'' is shown sitting inside a gigantic warehouse. As the camera pulls slowly back, it reveals row after row of boxes stacked to the ceiling.

While the image is a pure Hollywood creation, the truth is the ballots from the chaotic 2000 presidential election are still around.

Five years ago, the state of Florida gathered up boxes of ballots from 65 of the 67 counties and stashed them inside the cramped, air-conditioned confines of the state archives in Tallahassee.

After much hand-wringing and debate, state officials decided in 2003 that they should hold onto the more than six million votes cast in the historic election between Al Gore and George W. Bush that Bush ultimately won by just 537 votes. Normally, ballots are destroyed after 22 months.

But now Secretary of State Kurt Browning says he would just as soon junk them and free up the space in his archives that hold the ballots -- more than 4,000 cubic feet.

''What purpose do they serve?'' said Browning, who said he doesn't understand the ''mystique'' that still surrounds them and has not seen the HBO movie. ``I have a hard time giving away valuable space for more than 5,000 boxes.''

As the HBO film dramatizes, the campaigns of Bush and Gore waged a 36-day legal battle over whether to recount the presidential vote in Florida. The state Supreme Court eventually ordered a statewide recount, but this was halted by the U.S. Supreme Court, paving the way for Bush's victory.

In the wake of the ruling, several news organizations, including The Miami Herald, conducted their own recounts, looking at ballots across the state, including the now-outlawed punch-card ballots used in most large counties at the time. Part of the recount controversy centered on whether votes were not counted because voters were unable to fully punch out the ''chads'' on the ballots.

Torn by what to do about the ballots, state officials tried to get legislators to render a verdict, but lawmakers sidestepped the controversy. Then Secretary of State Glenda Hood finally decided in May 2003 to gather up the ballots.

But the move came too late. Two Panhandle counties, Bay and Holmes, had already destroyed them.

''There was no official legal statement that said we were required to send them,'' said Bay County Supervisor of Elections Mark Andersen. ``We destroyed them according to standards and procedures.''

Browning says this isn't the only reason a new recount is impossible. He also points out that the ballots have been handled so many times that any loose chads may have finally fallen out. Browning, a former elections supervisor, also said it's only a matter of time before the paper used to make the ballots will begin to deteriorate.

Browning said ''political reasons'' keep him from throwing them out right now, noting that it wouldn't look good if a ``Republican secretary of state is doing away with ballots that elected a Republican president.''

But he admits that he wants to seriously consider moving them out sometime after the 2008 elections.

That's a bad idea, counters Julian Pleasants, a retired University of Florida professor and author of Hanging Chads: The Inside Story of the 2000 Presidential Recount in Florida.

Pleasants concedes that it would be impossible to recreate yet another recount. But he said future historians need to be able to examine as many ballots as possible, whether it's the punch-card ballots or absentee ballots sent by overseas voters, another point of dispute between the Bush and Gore teams.

''This is the most extraordinary election in American history,'' said Pleasants, who was consulted by the screenwriter who wrote the HBO movie. ``You have some way of going back to try to determine historically what actually happened. How else would you know unless you have those original ballots?''

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