The Florida Supreme Court cleared the way Thursday for Palm Beach County and two other Democratic counties to hand count ballots, but did not decide whether the results must be added to the official state total that will settle the presidential race between Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore.
The decision was a victory for Gore and the Democrats’ hopes that manual recounts in those counties will unearth the votes the vice president needs to cut into Bush’s 300-vote edge in Florida.
A few hours after the court ruling, the hand recount of 460,000 Palm Beach County ballots was under way. A manual recount of 588,000 ballots also continued in Broward County, another Democratic bastion, and Miami-Dade County set a meeting for Friday to reconsider its earlier decision not to recount ballots.
Bush’s lawyers noted that the state court did not order Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris to include the results of the latest recounts in the Florida vote total. But a key Gore lawyer, David Boies, said the court would not have allowed the recount to proceed if it intended to ignore those votes later.
The next flash point in the battle over votes was likely to come Friday, when Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis was expected to rule on a motion by Gore’s attorneys to force Harris to accept the three counties’ recounted votes.
Whatever Lewis decides, his ruling is likely to be appealed immediately by either the Gore or Bush campaigns, depending on which is put at the greatest disadvantage.
While the legal battle played out in Florida courts, the Bush Republicans pressed their own case in a federal appeals court in Atlanta, where they charged in a suit aimed at stopping the hand recounts that “the entire nation is witnessing the disintegration of a process that was designed to elect America’s president.” The 12 justices requested that lawyers for both sides file briefs with the court Friday.
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The presidency could be decided by the results of the hand count in Palm Beach County alone, a predominantly Democratic area of Florida that Gore carried on Election Day by a wide margin. County election officials said it could take six days to examine all the ballots and complete the recount.
“In the end, our goal remains clear and simple: Let the will of the people be done, by having the votes of the people of Florida counted,” said William Daley, Gore’s campaign manager. “We hope the secretary of state will not try to impose other obstacles in the path of this count, and we hope the counties will complete it quickly.”
The court ruled only on the legality of proceeding with the recount, not on whether Harris must accept the votes. Gore’s attorneys said they would go back to court immediately if Harris, who has already said she found no legitimate reason to add the votes to the tally, still refuses to accept the recount.
On Monday, Lewis ruled that Harris was within her authority to hold the counties to the state’s Tuesday deadline for certifying vote totals, but that it was up to the counties to decide whether to conduct hand recounts.
The Florida Supreme Court weighed in on Tuesday, ruling that while Harris could decide whether to accept recounted ballots in the final vote total after the deadline, she could not arbitrarily dismiss the revised vote counts without legal justification.
Shortly after the ruling, Harris gave the three Democratic counties until Wednesday afternoon to justify why their certifications should be amended to reflect the results of recounts.
Six hours after receiving their requests, she rejected them and said she would not accept any revised vote totals beyond the deadline, except for overseas absentee ballots due at 11 p.m. CST Friday. She said she expected the state to certify the final election results Saturday.
The latest high court ruling Thursday, though, puts that time frame in legal jeopardy.
“It appears that the relief sought on the questions of whether the canvassing board may conduct a manual recount of the votes cast for President and Vice President has been answered in the affirmative in the Circuit Courts of Leon and Palm Beach County,” the state Supreme Court said in its unanimous ruling.
“At present, this is binding legal authority on this issue and there is no legal impediment to the recounts continuing. Thus, petitioners are authorized to proceed with the manual recount.”
Bush and the Republicans want the federal or state courts to stop the vote recount, claiming that the 300-vote margin already cited by the secretary of state shows that Bush has won the state, its electoral votes and the presidency.
Gore and his attorneys want the count to continue, believing they can pick up enough votes to defeat Bush. In one day of counting, Gore picked up 18 votes in a handful of Broward County precincts among the hundreds to be recounted.
Thursday’s Florida Supreme Court decision was only the latest incremental development in what has become one of the most highly and hotly contested sets of election results in history.
The court decision not only opened a pathway to more votes for Gore in Palm Beach County, it also gave the Democrats the legal clout they need to press their case for a manual recount in Miami-Dade County, which decided against a recount three days ago. The ruling also legitimized the hand recount under way in Broward County.
The Gore campaign pushed for recounts in those areas because voters there strongly supported Gore in the presidential election 10 days ago. A statewide recount by machine shaved 1,400 votes off the lead Bush appeared to carry one day after the election.
The hand recount teams, made up of election judges and observers from both parties, are looking for signs on the ballots–particularly on those that did not register presidential votes when they were put through counting machines–that the voters actually intended to cast a vote for president.
Finding dents in chads, the bits of paper on the ballots that are supposed to pop out once a vote has been cast, is one method of making that decision, along with finding holes in the chads or finding partially torn or hanging chads.
The process is taking place in an atmosphere of increasing animosity between the two camps.
Although the candidates were not in the media spotlight Thursday, their advocates clashed just about everywhere.
At one Palm Beach County news conference, an election judge was confronted by a heckler who asked him whether it was true that he was having a love affair with another election judge, a question captured by the army of television crews covering the event.
“Howard Stern’s table is over there,” the judge said, referring to the New York radio talk show host.