Bush leads by 300 Votes in Florida; Late Recounts by Hand Still in Play

Throwing the presidential election into further turmoil, a judge upheld Tuesday’s deadline for counting Florida’s vote and a new tally gave George W. Bush a 300-vote lead.

But the judge also gave local officials enough leeway to continue hand counting disputed ballots, sustaining Al Gore’s hopes of pulling ahead and winning the White House.

In an effort to force a resolution, Secretary of State Katherine Harris gave county officials until 2 p.m. EST today to say why their hand counts should continue.

The announcement of Florida’s updated vote capped yet another day of rapid-fire litigation and political brinkmanship as the aftermath of the most confounding presidential election in decades grew, if anything, even more confusing.

County officials, who sued the state to allow hand counting of disputed ballots, had an appeal pending on Tuesday’s cutoff for all tabulations to be completed. The two presidential campaigns hinted at further legal action as well.

Attorneys for the Texas governor may be back in federal court as early as today, asking judges in Atlanta to overturn a decision Monday that upheld the manual recounts.

In West Palm Beach, where hundreds of thousands of ballots are at stake, local officials voted Tuesday to defy the deadline and start with a hand recount today. The process may take until Sunday.

In Miami, election workers also pushed past the state’s 5 p.m. cutoff and completed a hand count of about 5,800 ballots, 1% of those cast in Miami-Dade County. The county canvassing board voted, 2 to 1, against a full hand count after the sampling in three precincts produced a net gain of only six votes for Gore. Those votes will be sent on to Tallahassee.

In Broward County, local officials voted to ask the state Supreme Court whether to proceed with a hand count of more than 550,000 ballots after receiving conflicting legal advice from Harris, a Republican, and state Atty. Gen. Bob Butterworth, a Democrat. A ruling could come today.

In Volusia County, Gore picked up 98 votes after a grueling manual recount of more than 184,000 ballots. With just minutes to spare before the 5 p.m. deadline, county election officials turned over the certified results to a waiting representative of Harris. The aide had been dispatched from Tallahassee to pick up the document to give Volusia County as much time as possible to complete its work.

One week after the nation went to the polls to pick a new president, both candidates remained shy of the 270 electoral votes needed to claim the White House.

Even as Florida sorted through its postelection mess, New Mexico flopped Tuesday from Republican Bush’s column back to Democrat Gore’s after a 500-vote counting error was discovered. But state officials said the race was still too close to call and, regardless, the outcome will not determine who wins the White House.

That remains up to Florida, with 25 make-or-break electoral votes--which could tip on an undetermined number of absentee ballots due back by Friday.

As the postelection impasse entered its second week, the focus was on Tallahassee, where Gore sought to block Harris, a Bush supporter, from enforcing the state’s Tuesday deadline for all votes to be counted and turned in to the state capital.

In a decision that seemed to please both camps--and further muddy the situation--Leon County Circuit Court Judge Terry P. Lewis ruled that Florida counties could file new vote totals after the cutoff. But Lewis gave Harris authority to reject or approve them using “the proper exercise and discretion.”

On Monday, Harris had told the judge that only an “act of God” --such as a hurricane--would legally prevent her from demanding the final canvass numbers on Tuesday afternoon, the seventh day after the presidential election. But Lewis said that her discretion is much broader.

“To determine ahead of time that such returns will be ignored, unless caused by some act of God, is not the exercise of discretion,” the judge determined. “It is the abdication of that discretion.”

Indeed, Lewis raised a variety of possible situations that could lead to Harris using her discretion to allow some counties more time to report their results.

“What if there was an electrical power outage?” he said. “Some other malfunction of the transmitting equipment? . . . When was the request for recount made? What were the reasons given? When did the canvassing board decide to do a manual count?”

Democrats seized on that opening in Lewis’ ruling to urge counties to continue their hand counting. “The most important thing now is for the counties whose manual counts are in progress to continue and complete their work,” said former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Gore’s chief counsel in Florida.

David Boies, a Gore attorney, went further by suggesting more legal action if Harris did not accept late hand-counted votes.

“If the secretary of state absolutely refuses to accept the amended results,” he said, “then we may be back in court. But we all hope that what is going to happen here is that the will of the people will be heard.”

Hours later, Harris announced Bush’s small lead, based on results from Florida’s 67 Florida counties as of 5 p.m. The 300-vote margin compared to a 1,784-vote margin a week ago, before various recounts began.

In deference to the judge’s ruling, Harris gave election officials in three counties--heavily Democratic Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach--until 2 p.m. EST today to fax her statements explaining why they should be allowed to continue recounting votes. But after Harris’ announcement, Miami-Dade officials declined to expand their hand count.

Harris said she will certify the final election results on Saturday, after tallying the last overseas ballots, “unless I determine--at the exercise of my discretion--that these facts and circumstances . . . justify an amendment to today’s official returns.”

Bill Daley, chairman of Gore’s campaign, immediately accused Harris of siding with Bush to undercut Gore.

“Every Floridian has the right to have his or her vote counted,” Daley told reporters in Tallahassee. “But the Bush campaign and the secretary of state are trying to cut off that right. And we don’t support that.”

In Austin, Texas, a spokeswoman for the Bush campaign responded sharply. “If they go forward after tonight’s deadline, these Democratic counties are no longer counting, they are reinventing,” said communications director Karen Hughes. “The counties have now certified their votes to the secretary of state and Gov. Bush won. Yet it appears we have a deadline that may not be respected as a deadline at all.”

The back-and-forth was part of a sustained public relations battle both campaigns are waging, parallel to their legal fight.

Before Tuesday’s court decision, James A. Baker III, Bush’s Florida representative, offered to abandon the governor’s federal lawsuit and even allow some hand counting of ballots to occur right up to the 5 p.m. deadline. In return, he asked Gore to accept the results of certified results once the last absentee ballots are totaled.

“It would give some degree of finality,” Baker said. He cast the continued uncertainty over the election outcome in the starkest terms, saying the stalemate threatens to wreak havoc with financial markets and undercut the United States’ standing abroad.

“Why are the markets disturbed? Because they don’t see any finality here,” Baker said at a Tallahassee news conference, standing before a series of furled American flags.

But the Gore campaign swiftly rejected the proposal and Baker’s dire warnings as well. “It truly was not a proposal,” Daley said. “It was strictly, in my opinion, an inaccurate description of the laws of Florida.”

Moreover, Daley suggested investors were more worried about a drop in corporate earnings than a deadlock in the presidential election.

Adding to the rampant confusion, Atty. Gen. Butterworth, who served as Gore’s state campaign chairman--issued an opinion contradicting Harris and stating that Palm Beach and Broward county officials had the right to conduct a hand count of nearly 1 million ballots.

Butterworth said it was unfair to allow some counties to conduct hand counts, when others, such as Palm Beach and Broward, were still deciding how to proceed. “A two-tier system would have the effect of treating voters differently, depending upon what county they voted in,” he said. “This legal jeopardy could potentially lead to Florida having all of its votes, in effect, disqualified and this state being barred from the electoral college’s selection of a president.”

The Bush campaign accused Butterworth of exceeding his authority and circumventing Harris.

“According to Butterworth’s own Web page, he has neither the authority nor the jurisdiction to provide advisory opinions on election issues,” said Ari Fleischer, a Bush spokesman in Austin. “Such jurisdiction resides with the division of elections.”

In Palm Beach County, a hearing had been scheduled in the case of Gore supporters who claim the county’s controversial “butterfly” ballot caused them to mistakenly vote for Pat Buchanan of the Reform Party.

But several judges removed themselves before one was found to hear the matter. The judges who stepped aside either had prior relationships or had discussed the matter with attorneys involved in the case. The case was finally assigned to Circuit Court Judge Jorge LeBarga.

After three more lawsuits were filed Tuesday, a total of 10 are targeting the ballots and other recount disputes.

Amid all the squabbling, an opinion survey released Wednesday showed the candidates apparently battling to a draw in the public relations fight the two camps have been waging since last week’s inconclusive outcome.

Fifty-one percent of those surveyed said the Texas governor had done a good or excellent job handling the uncertain aftermath, compared to 46% who said that of Gore.

More significant, perhaps, if Bush hangs on to win the White House, 68% of voters said the governor would have legitimately been elected president, even if he fails to carry a majority of the popular vote nationally.

But in a sign of the polarization that yielded something of a split verdict in the Nov. 7 election, only 41% of Gore voters said they would view Bush as a legitimate winner, compared to 95% of Bush voters.

Most voters, 67%, believe Gore should drop any legal challenges and concede the race if a recount shows Bush winning Florida, according to the survey done by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

From Air Force One, President Clinton weighed in for the second time in four days, again urging patience. Speaking to reporters aboard the plane, he said Americans “should relax, take a deep breath.”

The survey of 1,113 voters nationwide was conducted Friday through Sunday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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Times staff writers Julie Cart, Edwin Chen, Mike Clary, Cathleen Decker, Janet Hook and Robin Wright contributed to this story.

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