Florida Tally Still in Doubt

Hopes faded Thursday for a quick resolution of the disputed presidential election, as George W. Bush’s lead shrank in an unofficial count and Al Gore challenged the legitimacy of the vote.

The chairman of Gore’s campaign threatened to sue, if necessary, to block Bush from taking the White House and demanded a hand count of several thousand ballots. “If the will of the people is to prevail, Al Gore should be awarded a victory in Florida and be our next president of the United States,” said chairman Bill Daley.

Bush aides claimed the vice president was trying to rerun a race they believe he lost at the ballot box. “Our democratic process calls for a vote on election day. It does not call for us to continue voting until someone likes the outcome,” Don Evans, Bush’s campaign chairman, replied.

On yet another remarkable day of political drama, filled with intrigue and invective, Florida election officials said completion of a mandatory recount will take at least a few more days.

They announced Thurday that the recount had been completed in 53 of their state’s 67 counties and that each candidate had picked up an additional 526 votes, leaving Bush in front by 1,784 out of a total of nearly 6 million cast.

But a survey conducted by Associated Press found that, with 66 of the counties contacted, Bush’s lead had fallen to just 229 votes. Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris did not dispute the accuracy of the AP count.

Regardless, the tally will continue to change and the outcome apparently will not be known for at least another week, the deadline for counting ballots trickling in from Florida residents living overseas.

In other developments, at least eight lawsuits challenging Florida’s results were filed in state or federal court by Gore supporters, including six in Palm Beach County and two in Tallahassee, where racial discrimination was alleged.

Sowing further confusion, officials in Oregon said Gore had pulled ahead there in the fight for the state’s seven electoral votes. But Gore’s lead was so narrow--2,192 votes out of more than 1.5 million cast--it could trigger a recount once all the votes are tallied.

In New Mexico, with five electoral votes, a count of 67,000 ballots in Bernalillo County continued, with Gore clinging to a 10,000-vote lead over Bush. The ballots were not counted right away because of a computer error.

With those two states and Florida still hanging in the balance, Gore had 255 electoral votes, Bush 246. Florida, with 25 electoral votes, still appeared to be the key to determining which candidate garners the 270 needed to claim the presidency.

But Republicans added still more uncertainty Thursday by saying they might seek a recount in Iowa and Wisconsin, which Gore carried by fewer than 6,500 votes apiece. The Bush camp was awaiting the outcome in Florida before deciding how to proceed in those two states, which count for a total of 18 electoral votes.

Nationwide, Gore continued to lead Bush narrowly in the popular vote by about 200,000 votes out of 100 million cast. The margin is the smallest since 1960, when John F. Kennedy beat Richard Nixon by 118,574 votes.

Nixon swiftly conceded that election despite strong suspicions of voting irregularities and even fraud. On Thursday, some scholars said Gore should consider that example.

“I think Vice President Gore has a very important decision to make, whether he wants to take the statesmanlike approach and accept the results as reported by the state of Florida, or whether he wants to pursue every reported or alleged irregularity or impropriety,” said James Lengle, a Georgetown University expert on presidential elections.

By prolonging the uncertainty, he suggested, “the dignity of the process ends up being violated, people lose faith in their public officials and political institutions.”

But Alan Brinkley, a professor of history at Columbia University, suggested it may already be too late to avoid furor over Tuesday’s vote.

“The idea has become enough planted in the media and in the minds of Democrats that [Gore] has been cheated out of the presidency,” Brinkley said. “On the other hand, a successful court challenge would leave the Republicans feeling they were cheated out of the presidency.

“I don’t think the republic’s going to fall, regardless of what happens,” Brinkley said. “But certainly in the short term, I don’t see any happy solution.”

The outcome in Florida--and thus the presidential campaign--remained clouded by allegations of irregularities, much of it centering on a confusing election ballot in Palm Beach County. Some Gore supporters there fear they may have cast votes for the Reform Party’s Pat Buchanan by mistake or that their ballots were unfairly disqualified.

Both sides have dispatched dozens of lawyers and political operatives to the state and also launched fund-raising drives to finance their postelection efforts.

Speaking to reporters in Tallahassee as Gore kept a low profile, Daley asserted there was “no other explanation” but voter confusion for the roughly 3,400 votes Buchanan received in the heavily Democratic area--a total far higher than in any other county in the state.

“Based on totals from other counties, there seems every reason to believe that well over 2,000 of those votes were votes for Vice President Gore, more than enough to make him the winner,” said Daley, who was joined by Warren Christopher, the former secretary of State acting as head of Gore’s oversight team.

Daley also challenged the election night decision by officials to disqualify more than 19,000 ballots--about 4% of those cast in the county--because they were punched for more than one presidential candidate. He cited that as further evidence of voter confusion, which might trigger a lawsuit seeking a new election in Palm Beach County.

“We’re facing some very serious questions, and legal steps will be taken,” Daley said.

A third recount in Palm Beach County--this one by hand--was ordered by the local election board in response to a request from the Florida Democratic Party. Under the law, the Democrats will be able to choose a sample of precincts to be manually recounted Saturday.

Attorneys from the Bush campaign quickly countered with their own request for a manual recount of about 4,000 votes in three precincts that they would pick.

Daley, citing unspecified “oddities” in other parts of the state, also said the Gore campaign would request that a sampling of ballots be counted by hand in three other counties--Palm, Miami-Dade, Broward and Volusia--further delaying resolution of the election.

Under the statewide recount now underway, the supervisor of elections in each county runs the ballots through a tabulation machine. The local canvassing board, which consists of the elections supervisor, the county commission chairman and a local judge, then certifies the results and sends them to a state canvassing board.

Responding to criticism of the slow recount, Bob Crawford, a member of the elections board, told reporters, “Nobody ever said that democracy was simple or efficient.”

“This is democracy in action,” he added, suggesting anyone wanting simplicity should look to Cuba.

Alleged irregularities elsewhere in the state included assertions that polls closed while people were still in line in Tampa and that some election officials refused to allow translators in voting booths for Haitian Americans in Miami.

But James A. Baker III, the former secretary of State heading the Bush oversight team in Florida, declared he had “not seen any evidence of fraud” and said it was important that the process end soon.

He said the Palm Beach County ballot in question had been designed by a Democrat, approved by the Democratic Party and published in advance of the election.

If the Democrats were to challenge the Florida election, they would have to wait until after Nov. 17, when all the absentee ballots are counted. But if they decide to challenge only the results in Palm Beach County, which seems likely, they could do it once the votes there are certified, which would come sooner.

The Republicans, meanwhile, stressed that it is entirely conceivable that some of the people in Palm Beach County who voted for Buchanan actually meant to do so.

Buchanan himself questioned his returns in the county. “My guess is I probably got some votes down there that really did not belong to me,” he said on NBC’s “Today” show. Still, he said the vote should stand.

But the Bush campaign sought to turn the allegations of impropriety against the Gore camp. Evans, the Bush campaign chairman, accused the Democrats of “politicizing and distorting” the situation in Florida “at the expense of our democracy.”

“Vice President Gore’s campaign did not like the outcome of election day,” Evans said at a news conference in Austin. “It seems that they’re worried that they won’t like the official recount results, either.”

He said the invalidation of 19,000 ballots in Palm Beach County is not that unusual, noting that roughly 14,000 were invalidated in that county four years ago.

However, the rancor that passed between the two camps Thursday seemed to go beyond a dispute over ballot design and other election technicalities, reflecting ill will from the hard-fought campaign.

Daley noted that word had leaked that Bush was working on prospective appointees to a Bush administration. “I believe that their actions to try to presumptively crown themselves the victors, to try to put in place a transition, run the risk of dividing the American people and creating a sense of confusion,” he said. Karen Hughes, Bush’s campaign spokeswoman, countered by suggesting Daley and other Democrats were being “somewhat shrill.”

Insiders said Bush intended to appoint retired Army Gen. Colin L. Powell as secretary of State; Dick Cheney, his vice presidential running mate, as head of transition; and Andrew Card, a former Transportation secretary in the Bush administration, as his White House chief of staff.

The growing discontent among Democrats at the grass roots was evident at a rally outside the county government building, where union members set up a hotline to field voter complaints for possible use in a lawsuit.

A crowd of about 2,000 chanted “Revote! Revote!” and “Gore got more!” while the Rev. Jesse Jackson whipped up the multiracial, multiethnic crowd.

“We are now taking the leaves off the bushes and we’re finding irregularities,” Jackson charged.

Jackson, who spoke for 25 minutes until beads of sweat dotted his forehead, said, “In West Palm Beach, the issue here today is not about black and white, but what’s wrong and right.

“We’ve worked too hard and sacrificed too much to get this close to the goal line and drop the ball now.”

*

Times staff writers Julie Cart, Edwin Chen, Megan Garvey, Meg James, Maria L. La Ganga, Kim Murphy and Massie Ritsch contributed to this story.

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How the Vote Changed

Chart shows the latest county-by-county results from the presidential vote recount in Florida, based on an unofficial survey by the Associated Press. With votes in 66 of 67 counties recounted, the tally shows Republican George W. Bush leading Democrat Al Gore by 229 votes. Gore has a net gain of 2,234 votes from the election night count. Bush has a net gain of 679 votes. The last count of all 67 counties before the recount showed Bush leading Gore by 1,784 votes. The vote totals are subject to verification by the Florida Secretary of State’s Office and subject to legal challenges by candidates and others.

Margin of difference

Original Bush margin: 1784 votes

Recount margin: 229 votes