Manual Recounts Grind On in Florida Amid Frayed Nerves

Attorneys for Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush prepared Sunday for a historic showdown today before the Florida Supreme Court here, even as two counties pushed forward with hand recounts of votes and a third county--the sprawling Miami-Dade metropolis--readied its own recounting effort.

In preparation for oral arguments before the seven-member high court, attorneys for Bush said in legal papers Sunday that state law gives Secretary of State Katherine Harris broad authority to declare a presidential winner in Florida and put an end to the tally and re-tallies because “there is no duty to conduct a manual recount or any right to have one.”

Bush’s attorneys argued that allowing Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties to conduct recounts “necessarily would produce an inaccurate tabulation.”

“Allowing these three counties, and only these three counties, to include manual recounts will inevitably skew the results in a partisan manner that favors Democrats,” the Bush lawyers said in a 46-page brief.

But lawyers representing Gore responded in a 22-page document that large counties inevitably face a tough time beating a seven-day deadline to certify election results. And they blamed Harris for the late start of the recounts, calling her subsequent push to block the tallies “the very definition of capriciousness.”

To exclude the hand tallies, the Gore lawyers argued, “would make a mockery” of state law and exclude thousands of voters from being counted “not by virtue of their own action or inaction” but because of balky canvassing boards dealing with “an arguably unlawful timetable” set by Harris.

The high court is not expected to rule until Tuesday or later, and the key question for both sides is when Harris will be allowed to certify the final results.

The GOP wants the certification now, while Bush is still ahead with a 930-vote lead; Democrats do not want it until the manual recounts are completed.

In South Florida, meanwhile, canvassing boards in Broward and Palm Beach counties continued scrutinizing ballots.

In Broward County, in a reversal significant for the Gore campaign, the three-member board voted unanimously to liberalize the standard by which undervotes are reviewed.

Last week, the board firmly decided that only chads--the paper scraps that fall out when a ballot is punched--detached from two sides of the ballot could be considered votes. Now, any undervote, including ones marked by no more than dimples, will be reviewed, Broward County Atty. Ed Dion announced Sunday.

“We felt our previous standard was too restrictive and therefore unlawful,” Dion said. “So now the board will consider every undervote on a case-by-case basis to determine the voter’s intent.”

Broward Democrats were thrilled by the decision, which potentially could mean hundreds of more desperately needed votes for Gore.

“We have been saying all along they needed to do this to give us a fair and accurate vote,” said Rep. Peter Deutsch (D-Fla.).

Republicans said the decision was outrageous. “It’s like changing the rules in the middle of the game. It’s unfair,” said Ray Sullivan, a spokesman for the Bush campaign.

As of Sunday afternoon, 391 precincts had been counted, with 105 net votes for Gore.

Broward plans to finish counting all 609 precincts by 5 p.m. today. Election officials then will turn to the disputed undervotes, which have been set aside since the Broward recount began Wednesday.

In Palm Beach County, election officials attempted a stab at civility, a day after a marathon counting session that resulted in few results but plenty of tension, frayed nerves and emotional accusations of conspiracy.

Charles Burton, the Palm Beach County judge who is the chairman of the county election canvassing board, offered 28 exhausted counting teams a jovial pep talk Sunday morning. Election officials said there was now a shred of hope that it could be complete by Thanksgiving.

Burton urged the counters, who are evenly divided among Republicans and Democrats, to be kinder to one another despite their partisan differences.

He pointed out that when the county is handling nearly half a million ballots, there will be minor errors. But he said the errors do not amount to conspiracy. He recalled a moment Saturday when a chad fell to the floor.

“I’m telling you,” he said, “the observer went crazy: ‘There’s a chad on the floor! Help!’ ”

Earlier in the weekend, the hand count had been dominated by a Republican campaign to paint the South Florida recounts as tainted and out of control. The GOP had alleged, among other things, that ballots were dropped and misplaced, taped over and used at one point to clean a woman’s fingernails. They accused Broward County election workers of eating chads.

Despite the furor, Denise D. Dytrych, the Palm Beach County attorney and a Republican, said: “I haven’t seen anything that would even be close to fraud.”

As the pace of the count picked up Sunday, Democrats attempted to seize momentum in Palm Beach County on Sunday, saying the GOP complaints were transparent “red herrings.”

In Miami, election officials were set to begin at 8 a.m. today with a hand recount of 654,000 ballots that was expected to take at least 10 days.

And the political sniping was everywhere. “This is more than foolhardy. It is reckless,” said U.S. Rep. John Sweeney, a New York Republican in town to act as an observer. He was commenting on reports that chads were being knocked out of the ballots.

Far from Florida, the two candidates continued to try to show themselves as above the frenzy, both going jogging and attending church.

Bush went for a four-mile run in the streets of downtown Austin, Texas. Then he and his wife, Laura, attended the Tarrytown United Methodist Church.

During the pastoral prayer, Associate Pastor Ann Beaty referred to the election stalemate, saying: “We continue our prayers for the political process in the country and for those most closely affected by it. May your patience be their patience. . . . “

Gore and his wife, Tipper, jogged together on the grounds of the Naval Observatory, home to the vice president, and then attended a service at the Washington National Cathedral.

The Rev. Canon Peter F. Grandell spoke of the changing of seasons and said, “Endings really are beginnings.”

It fell to other politicians to take to the television airwaves to spin their reasons on why the recounting should go forward to help Gore gain some momentum, or be immediately certified so that Bush can hold on to one of the slimmest presidential margins in the nation’s history.

Gore’s running mate, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, appeared on five shows, while Republican Gov. Marc Racicot of Montana, a Bush partisan, held up on TV a plastic sandwich bag with 283 confetti-like chads from holes punched in a ballot. But neither camp tipped its hand on its next turn of strategy once the Florida Supreme Court rules.

“All options are still on the table,” Lieberman said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

On CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Lieberman said “We want the next president, whoever he is, to take office with a sense of legitimacy about him, without millions of the American people who supported the other candidate saying, ‘We were robbed.’ ”

For the GOP, Racicot, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” said, “I think you need to proceed as far as it takes to make certain the truth is established.”

Racicot also spoke with reporters in Austin.

“To reverse the results of this election, Al Gore’s supporters are less interested in accuracy and more interested in changing the rules to generate the votes they need to win,” Racicot said during a news conference at the Bush headquarters in downtown Austin.

*

Also contributing to this report were Times staff writers Edwin Chen in Austin; Mike Clary in Miami; Jeffrey Gettleman in Fort Lauderdale; Scott Gold in West Palm Beach; Henry Weinstein in Los Angeles; and James Gerstenzang and Richard Simon in Washington, D.C.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The 3 Recounts at a Glance

*--*

Total ballots Precincts Florida Counties to be recounted completed Net Gains Broward 588,000 391 of 609 Gore +105 Miami-Dade 654,000 3 of 611 Gore +6 Palm Beach 462,000 202 of 531 Bush +12

Florida Counties Expected completion Broward 5 p.m. today Miami-Dade Dec. 1 Palm Beach Wednesday

*--*