Florida Justices OK Hand Recount

In a victory for Al Gore, the Florida Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that hand counting of paper ballots could go on despite George W. Bush’s continuing legal efforts to stop the tallying.

But a crucial decision in the political standoff will come today, when a Tallahassee judge rules whether Secretary of State Katherine Harris will be forced to include new vote totals when she certifies a winner in the presidential election--even if that means delaying the announcement she planned for Saturday.

As it stands, Republican candidate Bush leads in Florida by 300 votes, with the last overseas absentee ballots due by midnight tonight. The winner of Florida will become the nation’s 43rd president, and Gore is pressing to continue the hand recounting in Democratic areas well beyond the Tuesday deadline Republican Harris enforced this week.

Hours after the high court’s decision, officials in the Democratic bastion of Palm Beach County began a manual recount of more than 460,000 ballots, which had been delayed for several days by legal haggling. The process is expected to last through the weekend.

In Broward County, Gore netted 21 votes after a second full day of hand counting was completed in that Democratic stronghold, where officials are poring over nearly 600,000 ballots.

Today, attorneys for Gore will try to expand the manual canvassing even further when they go before election officials in Miami-Dade County to urge a recount of approximately 645,000 ballots. After a partial canvass earlier this week, Miami-Dade officials voted, 2-1, against a comprehensive hand count.

Nine days after voters went to the polls to pick a new president, the overtime fight for the White House advanced on two fronts Thursday: one legal, one political.

The focus revolved around Saturday’s scheduled certification of a Florida winner. Gore hopes to win enough votes from the Broward and Palm Beach county recounts to make it difficult, if not impossible, for Harris to plausibly declare Bush the victor.

Bush, in turn, hopes to create a certitude around the Saturday announcement that will make it equally difficult, if not impossible, for Gore to keep pushing for recounts without looking desperate.

Gore Presses Case in Radio Interview

As lawyers faced off in various courthouses across the Southeast, Gore pressed his case in a radio interview from Washington, denying any divisiveness in his fight to overtake Bush in Florida. “I just want to do my part to try to protect our country and our ability to come together,” he said.

“The choice really is whether the voters are going to decide this election by having every vote count or whether that process is going to be short-circuited without all the votes being examined,” Gore said in an ABC radio interview on a show hosted by Tom Joyner.

Asked whether the Republicans were trying to steal the election, he said: “I would discourage the use of that word.” But he reiterated that every vote needs to be counted.

While Bush remained out of the public eye, the governor’s campaign announced it would abandon threats to challenge the vote in Iowa, where Gore eked out victory by just 0.3% of 1.3 million votes cast.

“Gov. Bush believes the time has arrived for our nation to begin the process of moving forward,” campaign chairman Donald Evans told reporters in Austin, Texas--and he urged Gore to follow suit.

“A concluding deadline arrives [tonight] at midnight in Florida,” Evans said. “For the sake of our country, and so that we can begin to unite our nation, [tonight’s] deadline must be honored.”

At the same time, however, the Bush campaign stepped up efforts to pursue a possible recount in Oregon, where Gore leads by about 5,750 votes.

Most of Thursday’s action, however, was on the legal front, as the election aftermath continued its now-familiar pattern of lawsuit, followed by countersuit, followed by counter-counter-lawsuit.

Taking their legal fight outside Florida, the two sides battled in federal court in Atlanta, filing briefs over a Bush bid to stop the hand counting on constitutional grounds. “Eight days after Florida’s presidential vote, the entire nation is witnessing the disintegration of a process that was designed to elect America’s president,” Bush’s attorneys argued.

But Gore’s lawyers, who wish to keep the matter in presumably more friendly Florida courts, asserted that the case “is simply not appropriate for federal court intervention of any kind at this point in the proceeding.”

The Supreme Court decision came in a case brought by the Palm Beach County canvassing board.

Attorneys for Bush and Harris argued Florida law specifically calls for a machine recount, not hand tabulations, in close elections. After unofficial results gave Bush a statewide 1,784-lead on the morning after the election, a machine-tabulated recount left the governor ahead by 300 votes.

“A manual recount of the ballots in a county is proper only where there has been a failure of the vote tabulation system,” attorneys for Harris said in written arguments submitted to the high court.

But Gore’s attorneys asserted a recount is the only way to ensure that all votes are properly recorded. “That will allow the determination of the winner in Florida to be based upon the actual choice of the people in Florida as reflected in accurate vote counts,” they said.

The seven-member court--six of whom are Democratic appointees--sided with Gore in a brief ruling issued at the close of business. The justices noted that lower courts in Palm Beach and Leon counties ruled earlier this week that recounts could continue.

“At present, this is binding legal authority on this issue and there is no legal impediment to the recounts continuing,” the Supreme Court said.

The decision effectively placed the weight of the nation’s inconclusive election back on Leon County Circuit Judge Terry P. Lewis, who must decide today whether to force Harris to accept new vote recounts and whether to block final certification of the vote tally until all legal recounts are completed.

Thursday morning in Tallahassee, Gore’s attorneys marched into Lewis’ court hoping to force Harris to rescind a Wednesday night decision prohibiting four counties--including Broward and Palm Beach--from submitting updated vote totals. Harris has announced plans to certify a winner in Florida after the last of roughly 2,700 overseas ballots are tabulated on Saturday.

The lawyers said Harris abused her authority and ignored a Tuesday ruling by Lewis barring her from “arbitrarily” dismissing updated counts.

W. Dexter Douglass, a Gore attorney, told the judge a number of circumstances, such as uncounted ballots found in preliminary canvassing, should have prompted Harris to allow the recounts to continue. “The list of scenarios is almost endless and the secretary of state did not exercise her discretion,” Douglass asserted.

Attorney Joseph P. Klock Jr., representing Bush, sharply disagreed. “The secretary of state took enormous care here,” he said, noting Harris spent seven hours evaluating the explanations by the four counties seeking more time to count. “She paid particular attention to following the order,” he told the judge.

While both sides awaited today’s ruling from Lewis, the manual recounting of ballots finally got underway Thursday night in Palm Beach County, where officials first voted to begin the procedure early Sunday.

Though Broward County began its recount Wednesday, Palm Beach County delayed action while awaiting a decision from the Supreme Court. “What the court is saying now is that we’re giving you the authority to begin,” said County Judge Charles Burton, chairman of the canvassing board.

Before the counting got underway, about 600 Bush supporters swamped the Palm Beach County Emergency Operations Center, where election workers were assembled, in a protest apparently encouraged by radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

After chanting Bush’s name and “No more chads”--a reference to the bits of paper that hang off punched ballots--the demonstrators left after about an hour, promising to return today. About 100 protesters, representing groups including the Sierra Club and National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, staged counterdemonstrations.

In nearby Broward County, election officials hand counted ballots from 90 of 604 Fort Lauderdale-area precincts. Local Republicans, meantime, went to court to try to stop the recounting--part of an apparent strategy to delay the tabulations as Saturday’s certification neared.

At one point, subpoenas were served on the three-member canvassing board, ordering them to appear at a hearing scheduled today in yet another lawsuit filed Thursday.

“We are going to bring a stop to this,” said William Scherer, an attorney for the Broward County GOP, as he stood in the parking lot outside of the canvassing center.

Deputies Collect 78 Bits of Paper

On Wednesday night, sheriff’s deputies collected 78 bits of paper after Republicans suggested the scraps were proof that ballots were being mishandled.

“This is a joke,” responded Rep. Peter Deutsch, the local Democratic congressman. “Courts have already overturned everything Katherine Harris has tried to do to stop the recounts and this lawsuit against the canvassing board is just a dilatory tactic.”

In a separate lawsuit pending in Palm Beach County, a judge is scheduled to hear arguments today on the prospect of calling a new county election as a result of the “butterfly” ballot used there. Some Gore backers say they were confused by the layout and mistakenly voted for Pat Buchanan of the Reform Party.

Moreover, another 29,000 ballots were never counted in the presidential race, either because they were double-punched or showed no presidential candidate preference.

*

Times staff writers Geraldine Baum, Stephen Braun, James Gerstenzang, Maria L. La Ganga, Lisa Getter and Scott Gold contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

RECOUNT ROUNDUP

Court Allows Recounts

5 a.m. PST

BROWARD COUNTY

Government workers resume their manual recount of ballots in the heavily Democratic county (A).

*

10:30 a.m. PST

PALM BEACH COUNTY

Palm Beach County (B) election officials rule they cannot authorize a manual recount unless they receive approval from the Florida Supreme Court in Tallahassee (C).

*

11:45 a.m. PST

BROWARD COUNTY

The Republican Party of Broward County (A) files suit to stop the manual recount there. The counting continued, despite the suit.

*

Noon PST

IOWA CONTEST

The Bush campaign announces that it will not challenge the results in Iowa, where Gore led by about 4,100 votes.

*

1:30 p.m. PST

HIGH COURT RULES

The Florida Supreme Court (C) declares there is “no legal impediment” to recounts. Earlier Thursday, in Atlanta, Bush’s federal court challenge to the hand recounts was on pause as an appeals court there gave Democrats until today to respond.

*

4:15 p.m. PST

PALM BEACH COUNTY

Bolstered by the state Supreme Court ruling, the county (B) begins a manual recount of ballots.

*

IOWA

Unofficial returns in the presidential race.

7 electoral votes, 100%

Gore: 638,469

Bush: 634,322

GORE WINS by 4,147

Source: Des Moines Register

*

Upcoming Events

TODAY

7 a.m. PST

Leon County Circuit Judge Terry P. Lewis will decide whether Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris must accept any new vote recounts and whether she must delay final certification of the vote tally until all legal recounts are completed.

9 p.m. PST

Absentee ballots from overseas must be received in each county.

*

SATURDAY

9 a.m. PST

Counties must report their overseas results to Harris, who plans to certify Florida election results soon after as final.

*

DEC. 12

Deadline for Florida to certify its 25 electors.

U.S. Popular Vote

Thursday’s nationwide election returns with 99% of the nation’s precincts reporting.

Gore: 49,859,736

Bush: 49,642,200

GORE LEADS by 217,536

OTHER CANDIDATES: 3,809,181

Sources: Staff and wire reports