THE FLORIDA Supreme Court may have helped steer the country away from serious trouble yesterday in enjoining a premature certification of last week's state vote for president. The two-sentence order the court issued on its own initiative was a favor to both presidential candidates, even though only one may have appreciated it.

The Republican secretary of state, Katherine Harris, had intended to certify the results today, before the completion of hand recounts in some counties. The certification would have been appealed, but nonetheless would have added to the pressure on Al Gore to concede while he still had a chance to overtake George W. Bush, who retains a narrow lead in the Florida count on which the presidency depends. That was the plain intent. But the last thing the country needs right now is to have the presidential election choked off and thereby decided before the lawful count is complete.

The Gore camp was naturally grateful for the court's intercession. The vice president's campaign won another legal victory later in the eventful day when the federal appeals court in Atlanta rightly refused the request of the Bush campaign to intervene, at least for now, in the state decision-making and block the recounting. The Bush camp expressed some disappointment; but in fact it should be grateful as well. If Mr. Bush became president on the strength of electoral votes that recounts showed or suggested he didn't deserve, his presidency would begin in shreds. That was the real threat that the unanimous state court averted, at least for now; it will hold a hearing on the merits Monday.

But there's a danger to Mr. Gore's eventual legitimacy too, if this extraordinary story eventually results in his election. The recounts will now go forward in three counties--Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade. That at least was the situation as of last night. All three of those jurisdictions are heavily Democratic and voted heavily for Mr. Gore; the recount is thus tilted in his favor. The tilt is aggravated by the fact that in two of the three counties local officials first decided that a manual recount wasn't necessary or appropriate under the law, and then revisited their decision. We favor the recounts--they will resurrect valid votes that deserve to be counted but that the earlier machine counts missed--but the tilt is wrong. A selective recount might move Mr. Gore marginally ahead, but many Americans will no more accept him as rightful president under those circumstances than partisans on the other side would accept Mr. Bush if he were too hastily anointed. Nor could any court opinion, in either case, erase all the suspicions. That's why there ought to be a hand recount of the entire state: Find as many legitimate votes as possible, in Republican and Democratic counties alike.

Whoever takes the oath in January ought not have to spend four years defending the legitimacy of his election. The goal should be not just to determine as accurately as possible who won, but to do so by a process that as much of the public as possible will regard as fair. The state supreme court moved the process in that direction yesterday, but only partway. The people best positioned to advance it further are the candidates themselves.