State’s High Court Puts Gore Appeal of Recount Ruling on a Fast Track

The Florida Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to hear Al Gore’s last-ditch attempt to overturn George W. Bush’s official victory, setting up one more legal showdown over who will be the nation’s next president.

The justices, devising a fast-track schedule, directed attorneys to file their legal briefs by noon today and planned for an hour of oral arguments Thursday. It will be the court’s second hearing on Florida’s tortured election in just over two weeks.

Gore is seeking to reverse the defeat he suffered Monday, when Leon County Circuit Court Judge N. Sanders Sauls upheld Bush’s 537-vote margin in a decision that rejected every remedy the vice president sought.

A spokesman for the Supreme Court said the justices were mindful of the urgency, with less than a week left for Florida to seat its presidential electors.

“Once again, this is a case that has been certified as a matter of great public importance requiring . . . immediate resolution,” said Supreme Court spokesman Craig Waters. Still, it was unclear how soon the high court might rule--or whether the justices will even take the case.

Outside the White House, Gore said he remained hopeful.

But he also suggested an imminent end to the legal and political warfare. Even as two new lawsuits go to trial today in Tallahassee, alleging Republican mishandling of absentee ballot applications, Gore pointed to the Florida Supreme Court as the likely termination point of his legal fight.

“I do think that it’s likely that all of the current controversies will end up being resolved one way or another in the Florida Supreme Court,” Gore said.

Texas Gov. Bush, speaking to reporters on the way to work in Austin, Texas, said he, too, expected matters to be soon resolved.

Sounding increasingly confident he will be the nation’s next president, Bush said he would move quickly on personnel decisions once the legal wrangling ends.

It is “important to show the American people this administration will be ready to seize the moment,” Bush said as he headed into the Texas statehouse.

After Monday’s dramatic developments, Tuesday was a day of relative calm in the storm that has followed the Nov. 7 election.

There was a smattering of legal action on several fronts. Florida lawmakers continued to delay a special session on the presidential election while awaiting further developments.

On Capitol Hill, Gore’s running mate, Joseph I. Lieberman, held separate meetings with House and Senate Democrats and pleaded for a bit more patience from the public.

“Judge Sauls’ decision was a disappointment,” Lieberman said. “But we have always said that the final arbiter . . . would be the Florida Supreme Court.”

Also making the rounds was Lieberman’s counterpart, Republican Dick Cheney, who met with GOP lawmakers and briefed them on his role heading Bush’s transition.

As a former member of the House of Representatives, he quipped about the pleasure he will have presiding over the Senate as vice president.

Florida has been at the crux of the postelection skirmishing because both candidates need its 25 electoral votes to capture the White House. Gore has 267 electoral votes, Bush 246. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

The electoral college will convene on Dec. 18 to cast the votes electing the nation’s 43rd president. But even before then, a key deadline looms: Tuesday is the cutoff for states to seat their electors.

Waters, the court spokesman, said the justices were mindful of that deadline in hastily scheduling Thursday’s hearing.

But he also stressed that, even though the court scheduled oral arguments and requested written briefs, that does not mean the justices will take the case. They could read the briefs and call off the hearing, dismiss it after the hearing without issuing an opinion--effectively upholding Sauls’ ruling--or return the case to the lower court with further instructions.

Waters also said no hearing has been set on the case returned Monday by the U.S. Supreme Court, which asked Florida justices to clarify a ruling that allowed counties to conduct hand counts beyond the state’s Nov. 14 cutoff.

But in legal briefs filed Tuesday, Bush lawyers asserted the court must first clarify its position before it can rule on Gore’s appeal of Sauls’ decision. The practical effect would be less time to count ballots should Gore prevail, further jeopardizing his chances of overtaking Bush before the Tuesday deadline.

“Any possible relief that this court might order after its review of the contest appeal depends upon those legal questions,” the Bush lawyers asserted.

At the same time, they urged the state Supreme Court to dismiss Gore’s appeal, calling Sauls’ decision a “well-reasoned and careful determination.”

The Gore team, in its brief, told the state Supreme Court its original ruling extending the manual count was “correct.”

The state high court “did not change the rules of the game when it interpreted and applied Florida statutes,” the Gore team said, rejecting the Bush side’s assertion. “To the contrary, this court’s decision was compelled by settled Florida law.”

The Gore team did not address its appeal of Sauls’ decision, reserving those arguments for papers to be filed today. While the Florida Supreme Court was at the center of most of the attention Tuesday, there was other legal action as well.

In Atlanta, the Bush campaign, joined by Republican allies, pursued two cases in federal appeals court seeking to nullify the results of hand recounts in three Florida counties that yielded Gore several hundred votes. Bush lawyers argued the recounts unconstitutionally made those votes more important than ballots cast elsewhere in Florida. They also argued that unclear and changing standards on how to count disputed ballots were unfair.

Democrats, who prevailed earlier in federal court in Miami, argued Bush’s appeal was now moot, since he has already been certified as the winner of Florida’s bitterly contested election.

In Pensacola, Fla., a federal judge heard arguments from Republican lawyers seeking to increase Bush’s vote by counting hundreds of overseas absentee ballots rejected for lack of a proper postmark or other flaws. Many came from Republican-leaning military personnel.

In Tallahassee, a group of African American leaders filed a lawsuit contesting the election results on the grounds that minority residents were systematically denied the right to vote.

In the state Legislature, meantime, Republican lawmakers continued to hold off on a possible special session aimed at ensuring Bush’s election by unilaterally handing him Florida’s electoral votes.

Tom Feeney, the pugnacious speaker of the Florida House, backed away from the sense of urgency he conveyed last week, saying he wanted to “chill out” for a few days. John McKay, the more cautious Senate president, said he still needed to sort through several legal issues before making a decision about summoning lawmakers to Tallahassee.

Democrats have one other legal avenue to pursue, apart from the case now before the Florida Supreme Court.

Today, a pair of lawsuits will go to trial in Tallahassee alleging that Republican election officials in Seminole and Martin counties improperly handled absentee ballot applications.

While most experts consider the suits longshots, rulings in Democrats’ favor could yield Gore roughly 8,000 votes, more than enough to overcome Bush’s statewide lead.

That uncertainty aside, the Texas governor went about the business of preparing for his intended administration.

Before heading to work Tuesday, he got his first postelection intelligence briefing from CIA officials. He expressed appreciation for the Clinton administration’s “willingness to send a member of the intelligence community” to Austin even as it withholds funding and office space for Bush’s transition efforts.

He again demurred when asked whether Gore should concede. “That’s a decision the vice president has to make,” Bush replied. “It’s a difficult decision, of course. I can understand, I can understand what he may be going through.”

Later, in an interview aired Tuesday night on CBS’ “60 Minutes II,” Bush said he did not view Gore as a sore loser.

“Not at all,” Bush insisted. “He and I share something; we both put our heart and soul into the campaign. . . . I do understand what it means to have put your all into a campaign and hope that it comes out the way you want it come out. . . . I think he’s doing what he thinks is right.”

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Times staff writers Michael Finnegan, Megan Garvey, James Gerstenzang and Jeffrey Gettleman contributed to this story.