Amid Shouts and Mutters, Judges Start, Stop Recount Inside Tallahassee Library

Outside the public library, supporters of George W. Bush hollered at the eight judges inside: “Enough is enough! Bush won!”

Inside, the judges sorted quietly through 9,000 disputed presidential ballots from Miami-Dade County, placing them, one by one, into labeled shoe boxes.

Soon after lunch came word of the U.S. Supreme Court order halting the hand recounts in Florida. The counting stopped. Outside, cheers erupted. “Gore must concede!” the Bush crowd shouted.

Inside the hushed library, the judges ordered the ballots sealed in boxes and hauled back to the Leon County Courthouse a few blocks away.

And so these ballots that Al Gore has struggled for weeks to have counted by hand were snatched once again from his grasp.

It would remain unknown, at least for now, whether these ballots--shipped to Tallahassee nine days ago on trucks chased by television news helicopters--would overturn Bush’s razor-thin Florida lead.

The aborted recount would certainly have changed the margin of the presidential election. But whether it would have changed the outcome was still unclear when Saturday’s counting stopped.

Bush Showed Gain in Short-Circuited Count

The judges’ manual review of the punch card ballots “discovered a lot of changes” in the vote tally, said Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho, who oversaw the recount.

But Sancho was noncommittal when asked whether Gore or Bush was gaining. “There were changes in all directions.”

A gleeful Bush observer told reporters the Texas governor’s net gain was 42 votes, with just over a third of the ballots counted.

Gore aides agreed but said uncounted precincts were heavily Democratic and would have yielded more votes for the vice president.

Court officials declined to release an incomplete tally.

The ballots arrived at the library shortly after dawn in the back of a white sheriff’s van lined with steel mesh to keep prisoners confined.

Leon County court clerk Dave Lang had assigned 25 pairs of deputy clerks to count the ballots.

But county Circuit Judge Terry P. Lewis decided overnight to have fellow judges count the ballots instead.

Both Camps Send Observers

Pacing in the parking lot were scores of Bush and Gore operatives dispatched to observe the count. Many were veterans of the November recounts in Broward and Palm Beach counties. Some had traveled on chartered jets Friday night from Bush’s campaign headquarters in Austin, Texas, or from Gore’s home base in Washington.

Sarah Gilroy, a court reporter hired by the Bush campaign to transcribe arguments over ballots, came to the library with a stenotype on wheels. A sheriff’s deputy refused to let her in.

As she turned to leave, she muttered, “I’ll send them a bill for my appearance fee.”

Phil Beck, another Bush lawyer, offered reporters copies of new legal papers asserting that the 9,000 ballots had been “severely compromised by at least three and probably four machine counts and sorting, extensive handling and movement.”

“I’ve literally been up all night writing these objections,” he said.

Gore spokesman Douglas Hattaway, in turn, called the Republican complaints delay tactics aimed at thwarting the will of the people.

“Rulers rule with the consent of the governed,” he said.

New York Gov. George Pataki, a Republican ally of Bush, appeared at a podium in the library parking lot with American flags as his backdrop. He called the recount “an outrage and a miscarriage of justice.”

“Nothing but chaos,” he added.

But inside the library was no sign of chaos.

Four pairs of Leon County judges were counting nearly 1,000 ballots an hour. Four pairs of Bush and Gore observers watched but were barred from speaking.

The judges examined each ballot, some with a magnifying glass, and dropped it into one of five cardboard boxes labeled “Bush,” “Gore,” “Other,” “No Vote” and “Disputed.” It was to be up to Lewis to rule on the disputed batch at the end of the day.

Outside, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) appeared at the podium to trumpet Gore’s case for the recount. The crowd of perhaps two dozen Bush supporters shouted her down.

“All we want is a fair count,” she said.

“You’ve had it!” a man yelled.

“Go back to California!” another shouted. “Get over it! Go home!”

Mob Surrounds Library Door

In the final hour of the recount, the chants grew louder: “Save our republic!” “Sore loser!” “Kangaroo court!”

An outnumbered group of Gore supporters responded, “Count every vote!” but was drowned out.

When news of the U.S. Supreme Court stay arrived, a mob of reporters, photographers and television crews surrounded the front door of the library.

Terre Cass, the court administrator, opened the door and stepped out.

“All I can tell you is we are in recess right now until we can figure out what has happened,” she said.

As the newly resealed boxes of ballots were loaded back into the vans, Lang tried to keep his sense of humor.

“When the British surrendered Yorktown, they marched to the tune, ‘The World Upside Down.’ I want to see if I can get a copy of that song.”