The winding road to a new president

WASHINGTON (AP) _ On Nov. 7, Americans braved punishing snowstorms in South Dakota and New Mexico to vote. Traffic around some Florida polling stations backed up several miles. <br><br>Al Gore finally

Thursday, December 14th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

WASHINGTON (AP) _ On Nov. 7, Americans braved punishing snowstorms in South Dakota and New Mexico to vote. Traffic around some Florida polling stations backed up several miles.

Al Gore finally finished an all-night blitz, a hole in the sole of his cowboy boots. George W. Bush voted for himself in Texas, his own marathon done.

America, which likes to call itself the ``oldest continuous democracy,'' was in action.

Hours later, that boast to the world began to sound like a diagnosis of arthritis.

Old, yes. Spry, not so much.

Not in a country of Votomatic ballot machines.

A nation in which instant-cash machines chatter with crisp efficiency was darned if it could figure out who won. That was due to a big counting problem down in Florida, a state that sent men off to the moon.

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Come the Night:

That evening, confusion reigned.

On TV, Gore was declared the winner of Florida's 25 electoral votes even before polls closed in the western Panhandle. With victories elsewhere, the stars were lining up to give the Democrat the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency.

Bush heard about Florida over a tense dinner at a restaurant with his brother, Jeb, the Florida governor. Jeb Bush was feeling ``incredible anxious anxiety.''

So were Democrats when the projection of a Florida win for Gore was withdrawn. In the wee hours of Wednesday, TV networks declared Bush the victor in Florida instead, and therefore winner of the presidency.

From a Nashville hotel suite, Gore called Bush to congratulate him. ``He was good, very gracious,'' Bush told his cousin.

Gore's concession speech was loaded in a TelePrompTer. Bush has his victory speech in his hand.

Then Gore, advised that he was suddenly fewer than 1,000 votes behind, phoned Bush again.

``Let me make sure I understand,'' Bush said. ``You're calling me back to retract your concession?''

``You don't have to get snippy about this,'' Gore replied.

The capacity of Election 2000 for inflicting wretched twists on one side, then the other, then the other again, could not be overstated.

``Our campaign continues,'' William Daley, the Gore campaign chairman, told a restless Nashville crowd. A plane was arranged to fly Democratic lawyers to Florida, where the latest count put Gore 1,780 votes behind.

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The Morning After:

The Democratic hunt for ballot abuses produced quick hints of ``irregularities.'' First up: the confusing ``butterfly ballots'' of Palm Beach County, where many Democrats may have voted mistakenly for conservative Reform Party nominee Patrick Buchanan instead of for Gore.

Democrats zeroed in on four counties they believed were ripe for recounts beyond the statewide machine tally already under way.

Keenly aware that Gore had won the national popular vote, Democrats were gripped by a sense of unfairness as they collected stories about uncounted or improperly counted ballots in Florida. They forgot they were supposed to be angry at Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate who may have cost them the election.

They did not pause for long to reflect on the fact that if Gore had only won his home state of Tennessee, for example, he would have won the election without Florida.

They began talking about ``chad.''

Bush wasted no time floating the names of some Cabinet members and aides while his own legal team opened its Florida counteroffensive.

As the world watched, President Clinton counseled patience.

``The American people have spoken,'' he said, ``but it's going to take a little while to determine exactly what they said.''

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Counting by Machine:

Bush's lead slipped perilously during the statewide machine recount but never vanished.

Two days after the election, it sank below 250 votes unofficially before rebounding. Their cries of foul growing louder, Gore allies and lawyers pushed on a parallel track for a hand count of some 1.8 million ballots in four predominantly Democratic counties.

GOP governors told Bush he was losing the public relations battle and needed to get more operatives in Florida to make his case. In fact, more were already en route.

The rhetoric was growing heated. Daley spoke of ``an injustice unparalleled in our history.''

On Friday, three days after the election, officials in Palm Beach County began counting by hand.

Their work would become a familiar sight from one county to another: workers holding up ballot cards to see if light shone through any perforation.

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Restless Weekend:

Away from Florida, the candidates went about their business and their studied leisure. Gore played touch football with his family and went to a movie with Tipper, running mate Joseph Lieberman and his wife.

Bush tooled around his Texas ranch. After a high-profile meeting with potential Cabinet members that may have looked too presumptuous in retrospect, he was laying lower now.

The first postelection weekend brought no rest in Florida. While more than eight private lawsuits had been filed challenging ballot results, the Bush team was the first of the two candidates to go to court, seeking an order to stop manual recounts. No luck.

In Volusia County, a manual recount of all 184,000 ballots began.

The first polls rolled in. Americans wanted the election settled right, not quickly, by a 3-1 margin. But more than half said it should end in a week, when absentee ballots from overseas were in.

``We're not talking about a long delay here,'' former secretary of state Warren Christopher, Gore's lead representative, predicted soothingly. ``I think it's a matter of days _ not weeks, not months _ but days before we reach a result.''

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Deadline Dilemmas:

Piling up victories in courts and county election boards, and swaying public opinion, Democrats were getting everything except traction from the numbers. No matter how it was sliced so far, Bush was still ahead _ by 300 votes one week after the election.

James A. Baker III, Christopher's counterpart on the Gore team, gave voice to frustration. ``When is it going to end? I ask you, when is it going to end?''

Gore had come up with one extraordinary idea for ending it, proposing that all ballots in the state be counted by hand.

``This is the time to respect every voter and every vote,'' Gore said to the TV cameras from his official residence, framed by pictures of his family.

No deal, said Bush from the governor's mansion in Austin. The process ``must be final.''

Florida's seven Supreme Court justices, all appointed by Democrats, stepped in Friday, Nov. 17, blocking Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Bush partisan, from certifying the results that weekend. Her action would have frozen the Republican's lead in place.

On the second weekend after the election, the counting of absentee ballots from overseas _ many of them from soldiers and sailors _ helped boost Bush's lead to 930 votes.

Democrats were entering a trap of their own making. Taking into account advice from Democratic lawyers, county officials disqualified more than 1,100 overseas ballots for improper or missing postmarks.

The Gore campaign to have ``every vote count'' stumbled on an inconsistency. Indignation rose over hurdles thrown up against the ballots of military men and women.

But the Gore legal achievements held. Two weeks after the election, the state Supreme Court ruled manual recounts could continue and must be included in the final tally.

The court set a deadline for certifying the state's election: Sunday, Nov. 26, or by 9 a.m. the next day.

Would Gore concede if behind after that?

Maybe yes, maybe no.

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Third Week Lucky:

Bush's running mate, Dick Cheney, suffered a mild heart attack two weeks and a day after the election, even as anxious Republicans were absorbing the news of their state court setback. That slowed Bush's transition plans on a holiday week that held more anxiety than joy.

Dropping his previous criticism of the Republican for planning a presidency, Gore said it was appropriate for both men to go ahead. Time was wasting before the Jan. 20 inauguration.

Thanksgiving found scores, if not hundreds, of lawyers, political aides and vote hunters hard at work in Florida. ``We'll be enjoying turkey in Tallahassee, mashed potatoes in Miami and pumpkin pie in Palm Beach,'' said Jenny Backus of the Democratic National Committee.

``Butternut squash,'' she added wearily, ``in Broward.''

A dozen workers from the Gore campaign had planned a postelection Caribbean cruise, win or lose. They forfeited their deposits.

Bush caught a break.

First, the Miami-Dade County canvassing board, pressed for time with a deadline looming and besieged by Republican protesters outside its doors, reversed itself and halted its manual recount, stopping a potentially rich source of extra votes for Gore.

As well, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Bush's appeal of the Florida high court decision to allow recounts and extend the certification deadline.

On the third weekend after the election, the pace was ferocious.

Hand counts went down to the wire that Sunday. When Palm Beach County officials missed the 5 p.m. deadline by 90 minutes, the Florida secretary of state cut them no slack. Even their partial recount was discarded.

At a ceremony Sunday, Nov. 26, Harris certified Bush the winner of Florida by 537 votes.

``Now that the votes are counted, it is time for the votes to count,'' Bush insisted. ``Time runs short and we have a lot of work to do.''

Would Gore concede? Not on his life.

Still ahead were the U.S. Supreme Court hearing and more action by the Florida Supreme Court, not to mention a flaring Democratic challenge of thousands of absentee votes in Seminole and Martin counties.

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Fourth Week:

In rapid succession:

_Gore and Bush filed briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court. Leon County Circuit Judge N. Sanders Sauls ordered about 14,000 disputed ballots from Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties brought to him in Tallahassee. The nation marveled as a Ryder truck drove the first load to the capital.

_Out of the hospital, Cheney announced the opening of Bush transition offices in McLean, Va., paid for by private donations. The Clinton administration would not release $5.3 million in transition money because of the disputed election.

_As November closed, a Florida legislative committee recommended a special session to name the state's 25 representatives to the Electoral College. The motive of Republican legislative leaders was clear: If necessary, make sure Jeb Bush's brother wins.

_The U.S. Supreme Court sat in a historic session to hear arguments on Bush's appeal, as protesters for both sides massed in front of the marble columns.

_After meeting Republican congressional leaders, Bush said: ``I'm soon to be the president.''

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Decision Time:

On Dec. 4, Circuit Judge Sauls ruled against Gore on every bid to restart recounts and include previously rejected votes in his total. The decision left Gore's deficit at 537 votes.

The same day, the U.S. Supreme Court returned its case to the Florida Supreme Court for clarification. That was an obvious danger sign for Gore, but perhaps an opportunity for the Florida court to issue a sounder decision backing him.

Three days later, the nation's high court heard Gore's appeal of Sauls' decision.

By now, an aura of likelihood had settled on Bush. A few Democrats were saying openly that if Gore couldn't get the Florida Supreme Court to restart the hand counts, he should pack it in.

The pace, again, became stomach-churning. Election 2000's capacity for surprise was not spent.

On Friday, two Leon County Circuit Court judges refused to throw out any of the 25,000 absentee ballots challenged in Martin and Seminole counties by Democrats. Gore was dangling like a hanging-door chad.

The same afternoon, the Florida high court, divided 4-3, dramatically threw him a lifeline. The justices ordered manual recounts to begin statewide of thousands of votes and added 383 to Gore's vote total.

Despondent Democrats turned jubilant. Bush suddenly led by less than 200 votes out of 6 million cast in Florida, and anything could happen in the recounts.

No adjectives were left to describe the closeness. They had all been used up.

The excitement of Democrats lasted exactly one day. On Saturday, the U.S. Supreme Court, just as closely divided, shut the recounting down in an emergency order until it ruled on the case.

Tuesday night, just more than 33 hours after it heard arguments, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled.

As Clinton might have put it, the court had spoken but it was going to take a little while to determine exactly what it said.

Everyone with a copy fumbled madly through it. The bottom line was a 5-4 death knell for the Gore campaign. Some wiggle room, maybe, but about as much as if Gore's size 10 1/2 (and wide) feet were stuffed into size 9 boots.

It was time to concede.

``I accept the finality of this outcome, which will be ratified next Monday in the Electoral College,'' Gore said Wednesday night. ``And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.''

President-elect Bush asked Americans to pray for him, for Gore, their families and the country.

``Our nation must rise above a house divided,'' he said.

Bush, needing 270 electoral votes, got 271. Gore, who had needed just one more state of any size to win, finished with 267.

And with that, the old democracy finally answered the question, ``Who?''

The ``what ifs'' go on.