US awaits Florida ruling in its snagged election

US awaits Florida ruling in its snagged election
REUTERS

NOV 21: Florida's Supreme Court pondered the issue of hand recounts on Tuesday and county workers plowed on, examining thousands of ballots, in the US Presidential election that refused to end.

The seven justices of the state Supreme Court studied arguments made by competing lawyers on Monday seeking to clear the way to the White House for either Democrat Al Gore or Republican George W Bush.

The panel's decision on the legitimacy of hand recount tallies in three Democratic-leaning Florida counties could come at any time -- and could finally resolve the November 7 election, one of the tightest in US history.

Two weeks after Americans went to the polls, vote counters in at least two South Florida counties were due back at work on Tuesday. They were to continue reviewing ballots by hand in an attempt to assess whether Miami- and Palm Beach-area voters had tried to punch out votes for Gore, the Vice President, or Bush, the Texas Governor.

In Broward County, the effort took its toll when the county's elections chief resigned, saying she could no longer stand 15-hour work days.

Watershed court hearing

Monday's hearing before the Florida Supreme Court marked a watershed as the justices -- six appointed by Democratic governors and one a joint Democratic-Republican appointee -- considered whether the recount process would count at all.

That question is crucial to the outcome of the election, as Gore hopes that manual recounts of 1.7 million votes in the three Democratic strongholds will overturn Bush's lead of 930 votes out of the 6 million cast in the state.

But that is no sure thing, and early recount numbers seemed to indicate that new Gore votes were not piling up as fast as Democrats had anticipated.

Still, Democratic Attorneys pressed on at Monday's hearing, telling the court there was still time to conduct the manual recounts and include them in the state total before the mid-December deadlines by which Florida's 25 electoral votes must be cast in an act of democratic closure.

The issue appeared important to the court, with Chief Justice Charles Wells asking repeatedly about the latest possible date on which Florida could determine its result.

Gore Attorney David Boies, celebrated for taking on software giant Microsoft in an anti-trust case last year, said the court "certainly has the power" to extend Florida's original November 14 deadline for counties to report results.

Republicans urged the court to enforce the deadline and disqualify recounts, saying the time had come to let Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris certify the election and declare Bush winner of the state by 930 popular votes.

"If we continue to wait ... we will not have any better understanding of how many votes were cast and for whom," Bush Attorney Michael Carvin said.

Afterwards, representatives of both sides said they felt the court was leaning toward resolving the case quickly.

Gore adviser Jack Quinn told CNN's "Larry King Live" that the Florida justices had been "extraordinarily well-prepared," and he said he believed they were tilting toward the Gore campaign's argument that it was important to have all the ballots counted.

Barry Richard, the top lawyer for Bush in Florida, told the same programme he could not predict what the court would decide but expected them "do it as rapidly as they can."

"This has obviously been moved to the front of the queue," he added.

Other legal wheels grind on

While attention has focused on the Supreme Court's decision, other legal wheels ground on in an election that has seen an almost non-stop parade of threats and accusations traded between the two sides.

In Palm Beach County, a judge ruled on Monday that he lacked authority to order a countywide re-vote in the election even if a confusing ballot cost Gore a decisive number of votes. A Seminole County judge agreed to hear a lawsuit seeking to throw out all 15,000 absentee ballots cast there.

Florida's Democratic Attorney General Bob Butterworth urged state officials to reverse a decision to reject hundreds of absentee votes from overseas military personnel -- a move Bush supporters hope will bolster the Republican tally.

Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer called Butterworth's statement" a belated attempt at damage control" and said the Democrats were clearly running for cover.

A CBS News poll of 822 adults showed that Americans were losing patience with the delay and 66 per cent viewed the controversy as a big problem for the country.

Fifty per cent said they were willing to wait a bit longer for the election result, but 45 per cent said they wanted to hear the other shoe drop -- now.