Hand Count Sparks Legal War

George W. Bush filed a lawsuit Saturday seeking to block a hand recount of Florida ballots and preserve his slim margin in the all-or-nothing state, turning the deadlocked presidential election into a federal court battle.

But a judge refused to hear the case right away and, under heavy security and a nation’s anxious watch, election workers in Palm Beach County began hand tabulating thousands of disputed ballots.

With the White House hanging in the balance, the two presidential campaigns continued their verbal skirmishing, their contest still stubbornly undecided four days after the final votes were cast.

“At some point . . . Florida’s voters, and indeed all Americans, are entitled to some finality in the election process,” said James A. Baker III, Bush’s Florida point man, in announcing the lawsuit.

Warren Christopher, Gore’s election overseer, countered, “The importance of getting it right outweighs the importance of rushing to judgment.”

Indeed, he noted, Gov. Bush had signed a 1997 law in Texas that made hand-counting preferable to a mechanical recount in election disputes. “This procedure is authorized under Florida law, under Texas law and under the law of many other jurisdictions,” Christopher said.

Some of Bush’s fellow Republicans chimed in as well, questioning the governor’s decision to take the election dispute to court.

“The Bush people win if they’re fighting against a new election,” said Jim Pinkerton, a GOP strategist and former White House aide to Bush’s father. “But they lose if they’re fighting against a recount.

“The difference is people have kind of an intuitive sense that no election is perfect and you do the best you can to count and get it right. A new election is too much medicine,” Pinkerton said. “But no one can argue against a fair recount of the election you already had.” The escalating rhetoric between the two campaigns came as one Florida official warned of an “election meltdown,” and opinion polls showed the public siding with Gore’s position as the presidency teeters between him and Bush.

In two surveys issued Saturday, a majority of Americans opposed a Gore concession before all the Florida votes are counted. The process will take at least several more days, as absentee ballots have until Friday to trickle in from overseas.

The hand counting of roughly 4,000 ballots in Palm Beach County got underway Saturday afternoon as a cordon of sheriff’s deputies stood guard. Elsewhere, Volusia County officials spent the day scrutinizing one-by-one hundreds of write-in ballots to determine if they should count. At the end of the day, Gore had gotten five additional votes and Bush had picked up one.

A more thorough hand tabulation of about 185,000 ballots is expected to begin there today.

The identity of the nation’s 43rd president will most likely hinge on Florida and its trove of 25 electoral votes. Democrat Gore has 262 electoral votes, Republican Bush 246. It takes 270 to win the White House.

Florida Results Not Yet Certified

Before Saturday’s hand counting began, Florida state officials said their tally showed Bush leading by 960 votes, with 66 of the state’s 67 counties reporting. But results in Palm Beach County--a Democratic stronghold--have not been certified, pending a court hearing on Tuesday.

An unofficial tally of all 67 counties by Associated Press gave Bush a statewide lead of 327 votes over Gore.

Bob Crawford, one of three members of the state board that certifies Florida’s election results, added to the confusion Saturday when he suggested Palm Beach County’s ballots might not be counted at all when the state certifies its election results. Under Florida law, he said, if any county canvassing board misses Tuesday’s deadline to certify results the state board “shall ignore that county.”

“The counties need to be aware of that,” Crawford said. “If this whole state gets bogged down, different counties won’t have a chance for people who voted to be counted.”

Crawford, the state agriculture commissioner, is a Democrat but endorsed Bush for president and his Republican brother, Jeb Bush, for Florida governor.

Crawford’s remarks may have been an attempt to buttress George W. Bush’s claims that widespread hand-counting could undermine the results.

“I think we’re about to have a meltdown in Florida’s election because of the pressure that’s on,” Crawford said.

The latest legal salvo came from the Bush camp early Saturday morning, when attorneys filed suit in Miami federal court on behalf of Bush, running mate Dick Cheney and seven Florida residents who voted for the GOP ticket. The action sought to block hand recounts that Democrats requested in Palm Beach, Volusia, Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

Broward County is to begin partial hand counting this week. A request by the Gore camp for a hand count in Miami-Dade is pending before local officials.

Bush’s suit said if the hand counts reverse the GOP hopeful’s scant lead in Florida “the tainted result will be broadcast to the nation” and any subsequent reversal--if necessary--”will not be able to cure the serious damage to the legitimacy of the presidential election.”

“Any such taint, and the perception of multiple reversals in outcome, will interfere with the orderly transition of constitutional government,” the suit alleged.

A hearing is set for Monday before U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks, an appointee of President Clinton.

Greater Chance of Human Error Cited

In announcing the suit, Baker asserted the hand recounting of ballots “runs a much greater chance for human error” than the counting already done by tabulation machines.

“The potential for mischief would exist to a far greater degree than in the automated count and recount that these very ballots have already been subjected to,” the former secretary of State said at a Tallahassee news conference. “Machines are neither Republicans nor Democrats, and therefore can be neither consciously nor unconsciously biased.”

In a now-familiar scene, the Gore campaign responded with its own news conference a few hours later.

Appearing outside the vice presidential mansion in Washington, Christopher and campaign manager Bill Daley urged Bush to drop his lawsuit and defended the integrity of the hand count.

“If Gov. Bush truly believes that he has won the election in Florida, he should not have any reason to doubt or to fear to have the machine count checked by a hand count,” said former Secretary of State Christopher.

Addressing Baker’s claim that machines are unbiased in their reading of the votes, Christopher said: “Machines can sometimes misread or fail to detect the way ballots are punched, particularly if there is a design flaw in the ballots themselves.”

If someone fails to completely punch through the ballot, the tabulation machine may not register their vote. Under the hand count conducted in Palm Beach County, election workers examined each ballot individually to see if any votes were missed. The workers, in turn, were being carefully watched by representatives of the two political parties.

As Christopher and Daley spoke, the vice president stayed inside the mansion. The blinds on windows at the front of the house, still decorated with 13 oversized pumpkins on the front porch, were drawn.

But Saturday night, Gore and his running mate, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, went to see a movie together with their wives. The four saw “Men of Honor,” starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Robert De Niro.

In Texas, Bush appeared briefly before reporters at his rural getaway in Crawford, outside Waco. The governor referred questions on the Florida controversy to Baker. But his frustration was evident. “It’s an interesting period,” said Bush, who wore a cowboy hat, canvass coat and mud-spattered jeans. “We’re all in limbo.”

When his springer spaniel, Spot, kept barking, Bush quipped, “She wants it to be over too.”

Most See Fairness as Key Objective

The American people, however, seem to be in no particular hurry.

By a 72%-25% margin Americans said it was more important to make certain the presidential count in Florida was fair and accurate than to resolve the matter as quickly as possible, according to a Newsweek survey.

But a 61% majority said neither Bush nor Gore should prolong the wait past the final counting of all ballots, suggesting there was little support for any court fight.

The survey of 1,000 people was conducted Thursday and Friday, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Separately, only 27% of Americans surveyed in a Time/CNN poll said Gore should concede immediately. Another 27% called for a concession if he loses in the official Florida vote count and 39% said Gore should wait for any court decision on contested ballots.

The survey of 1,154 Americans, ages 18 and older, was conducted on Friday and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

From Washington, Clinton also weighed in on the impasse, using his weekly radio address to counsel patience. “The people have spoken,” he said. “The important thing for all of us to remember now is that a process for resolving the discrepancies and challenges to the election is in motion. The rest of us need to be patient and wait for the results.”

Even as the Bush camp pressed for a speedy resolution in Florida, operatives were exploring the prospect of seeking recounts in Wisconsin and Oregon, which Gore narrowly won.. In New Mexico, where Bush was ahead by just four votes, a recount was also possible.

The results in Florida are expected to fluctuate as election officials tally an undetermined number of outstanding ballots cast by Floridians living overseas.

Until then, Palm Beach County remains at the center of the legal and political fight because of its unusual and, for some, confusing ballot. Several Gore supporters have filed their own lawsuit, asserting the confusing ballot caused them to mistakenly vote for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan.

In addition, more than 19,000 ballots were set aside on election day because they were punched for more than one candidate. Officials say an additional 10,000 ballots had no presidential pick at all.

In Los Angeles on Saturday, about 500 Gore supporters rallied near the Federal Building in Westwood. Carrying placards and chanting “revote” and “every vote counts,” the demonstrators filled the sidewalks on all four corners of the massive intersection.

“It is not about the result of the election. It is about letting the voters be heard,” said David Olson, 38, of Pacific Palisades.

A handful of Bush supporters braved the crowd. “I might be outnumbered here but the Bush-Cheney ticket won this race fair and square,” said Alex Burrola, 23, of Montebello, an unsuccessful GOP candidate for the state Assembly.

*

Times staff writers Edwin Chen, Bob Drogin, James Gerstenzang, Lisa Getter, Scott Glover and Richard Winton contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Down for the Recount

After counting the ballots by machine once Tuesday night and then again since, officials in three Florida counties have agreed to manually count ballots there. A fourth, Miami-Dade, may also count ballots again. And a fifth, Polk, is recounting some ballots by machine.

*

County Glance

Current voter registration

*--*

County Republican Democrat None/other Broward 263,289 444,103 156,694 Miami-Dade 327,102 382,748 145,078 Palm Beach 227,793 287,299 125,093 Polk 93,485 111,962 32,270 Volusia 97,019 109,855 44,377

*--*

Votes in 1996 presidential election

*

*--*

Republican Democrat Reform (Dole/Kemp) (Clinton/Gore) (Perot/Choate) Other 142,834 320,736 38,964 2,481 209,634 317,378 24,722 1,757 133,762 230,621 30,739 2,109 67,943 66,735 14,991 -- 63,067 78,905 17,319 827

*--*

Source: Florida Department of State Elections

*

How It’s Done

In Palm Beach County, which completed its hand recount late Saturday, tallying about 4,600 ballots took more than nine hours.

* The canvassing board supervised the process. The trio--a county judge, a county commissioner and the elections supervisor--outlined the guidelines of the recount as requested by the Bush-Cheney campaign and the Democratic Party of Florida.

*

* Also counting was a staff of 10 Republicans, eight Democrats and five with no party affiliation.

*

* The toughest ballots to discern went to the canvassing board, which scrutinized the slips of paper with dimples and pinholes. The Democrats’ contention was that a dimple or pinhole on the ballot card would be sufficient evidence to show the voter intended to vote for a particular candidate--even if the little tab of paper, called a chad, was not fully dislodged.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

What’s Ahead

Dates and deadlines facing Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore in their ongoing race for the White House:

SATURDAY

Volusia County, Fla., began a hand count of 184,018 ballots. Palm Beach County, Fla., election officials begin to recount ballots in four precincts. If there is a change in the count, they will then decide whether to do a recount by hand of the entire county.

*

MONDAY

Broward County, Fla., uses a hand count to re-tally votes in three precincts. If there is a change, it also will consider a full hand recount.

*

TUESDAY

Deadline for Florida’s 67 counties to certify their results to the Division of Elections. Miami-Dade County election officials in Florida meet to discuss a hand recount.

*

THURSDAY OR FRIDAY,

depending on the county

In Iowa, the deadline for Texas Gov. Bush to request a recount by personally writing to each of Iowa’s 99 county auditors is 5 p.m. Bush lost by about 5,000 votes.

*

FRIDAY

All overseas Florida ballots must be received by the Florida secretary of state.

*

MID- TO LATE NOVEMBER

Bush can request a recount in Wisconsin, where he lost by about 6,000 votes. The state is still waiting for its 72 counties to send in their final vote tallies. Bush would have until 5 p.m. on the third business day after the last ballot is turned in to request a challenge.

*

NOV. 27

Official results from Oregon’s 36 counties must be delivered to the state election office. A recount may be required by a state law if the margin between Bush and Vice President Gore is less than 0.2%, or about 2,800 votes.

*

NOV. 28

In New Mexico, the state canvassing board, including the governor, secretary of state and chief justice of the state Supreme Court, meets to certify the election returns.

*

FIRST WEEK OF DECEMBER

Possible start of an Oregon recount, which must be done by hand and could take at least three days.

*

DEC. 18

Electoral college representatives meet, usually in the 50 state capitals and the District of Columbia, to vote for president.

*

JAN. 6

Tentative date for a joint session of Congress to meet and count the electoral college votes. The Senate has passed a resolution to change the date from Jan. 6, a Saturday, to Jan. 5, a Friday. House members are considering a measure to do the same.

*

JAN. 8

In New Mexico, the deadline for the losing candidate to contest an election by filing a lawsuit in state district court, assuming the state is able to issue the certificate of election to the successful candidate on time.

*

JAN. 20

Inauguration Day.Source: Associated Press