Supreme Court Rules in favor of Bush

Gore "should act now and concede," Ed Rendell, the chairman of the Democratic Party said less than an hour after the court issued its late night ruling five tumultuous weeks after the nation voted.

Gore lawyer W. Dexter Douglass said, "It sounds like we lost."

"What else can we do?" he said. "It means we can't do the
recount."

Still, another legal adviser said the justices' order sending
the case back to the Florida Supreme Court might offer at least some hope that recounts could be conducted under a new standard.

Gore was reviewing the decision with his staff and attorneys,
and had not decided how to react to it, several sources said.

Bush attorneys also were reading the decision closely to
determine whether it gave Gore any hope of a recount.

"It's clear the decision has been reversed," said spokeswoman Mindy Tucker. "It's clear that the recounts that they've ordered will not happen. Beyond that, our attorneys are still looking at the decision and we'll have further comment later."

In an extraordinary late-night decision, the justices said the
recount ordered last weekend by the Florida Supreme Court could not be completed by a midnight deadline for selection of presidential electors and still pass constitutional muster.

"It is obvious that the recount cannot be conducted in
compliance with the requirements of equal protection and due
process without substantial additional work," the court wrote. Its ruling came with exceptional haste for the court, the day after it heard arguments in the case.

The ruling was the latest pivot point in the nation's unbearably
close election, a saga of counts, recounts, lawsuits by the dozens and two trips to the highest court in the land. For five tumultuous weeks, it has held Gore and Bush in limbo and the nation in thrall, and seared new terms into the nation's consciousness - "dimpled chad" most prominent among them.

That was one description for partially punched ballots,
thousands of which were at the center of the contested election in Florida, the state that stands to pick the next president.

Without the state's 25 electoral votes, neither Bush nor Gore
had the votes in the Electoral College needed to become president. With them, victory was a certainty.

The court's unsigned opinion said seven justices agreed that
there were constitutional problems with the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court on Friday.

The court said that because Florida lawmakers intended
separately to complete their own choosing of electors, perhaps Wednesday under pressure of a deadline for the Electoral College, requiring a new recount "could not be part of an appropriate" remedy.

By a 5-4 majority, the justices said the recount ordered by the
Florida Supreme Court was unconstitutional because varying methods and a loose standard would be used to count the votes. Further, the justices said no time remained for a new recount.

"Because it is evident that any recount seeking to meet the
Dec. 12 date will be unconstitutional ... we reverse the judgment of the Supreme Court of Florida ordering the recount to proceed," the court said.

In the majority were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and
Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

Dissenting were Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter,
Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

The justices issued the main ruling in an unsigned opinion.
Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas went further in a separate opinion, saying the Florida Supreme Court also violated the Constitution and federal law in ordering the recount.

Stevens' dissent said, "Although we may never know with
complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's
presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly
clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial
guardian of the law."