Florida Supreme Court says state must add recounts: Read transcript of the decision

A republican observer catches a quick nap before vote recounting continues. Tallahassee, Florida (CNN) -- The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that election officials must add

Tuesday, November 21st 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

A republican observer catches a quick nap before vote recounting continues.

Tallahassee, Florida (CNN) -- The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that election officials must add the results of manual recounts of presidential ballots to the state's final tally, which will determine whether Republican George W. Bush or Democrat Al Gore becomes the next president. The decision came exactly two weeks after Election Day.

Click here to read the entire transcript of the court's ruling. Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0

Hours earlier, Bush had filed a new legal brief with the court, arguing that the justices have no authority to set rules on which presidential ballots can or cannot be counted.

Bush attorney Michael Carvin said if the court got involved in setting ballot standards," that would engender further delay and chaos."
Democrat Al Gore's campaign countered by accusing the Bush camp of trotting out a "parade of horribles" to divert the court from addressing "this very important issue in the manual recounts."

Gore's campaign filed a brief of their own, urging the high court to decide on how votes should be counted.

Jenny Backus, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Party, said, "More delays are exactly what the American people and the voters of Florida do not want." "We have no timetable at the present time as to when a decision is going to be made. We just don't know," Florida Supreme Court spokesman Craig Waters told reporters at 11 a.m. Tuesday.

Latest developments:

The hand recounting of Florida's presidential votes continues today in three heavily Democratic counties.

Those partially completed recounts have given Gore 278 new votes by 9 p.m. -- not enough to overcome Bush's 930-vote lead in the state. Palm Beach and Dade county officials completed their counts for the night with plans to resume Wednesday morning. Broward County had completed recounts of its precincts but a recount of absentee ballots was continuing.

Looking to quiet talk among some Democrats in Washington that Florida recount results were less encouraging than expected, Gore's senior advisers said Tuesday they were confident currently disputed ballots would be counted in the end and give the vice president more than enough votes to pull ahead in the statewide tally.

One senior adviser acknowledged, however, that his calculus depended on most of the disputed or contested ballots being counted -- with local canvassing boards using if or other marks on the punch card ballots to determine voter intent.

â€¢ Both sides must file briefs with the state's 4th District Court of Appeals by 10 a.m. Wednesday on the question of whether Palm Beach County should have a revote.
Shortly after that deadline, the court is expected either to direct the case to the Florida Supreme Court or schedule oral arguments.

A circuit judge ruled Monday that he lacked authority to order a countywide revote even if a confusing ballot design cost Gore a decisive number of votes.

â€¢ A state court hearing will be held Wednesday in Palm Beach County on a motion by Democrats. They want to force county election officials to adopt a broader standard for deciding what is a valid punch-card vote.

â€¢ The White House said today that President Clinton directed his staff to do everything possible to help either Gore or Bush have a successful presidential transition despite a shortened period for it.

â€¢ Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Nebraska, a veteran of the Vietnam War, weighed in today on the controversy over disqualified military votes, calling Republicans "irresponsible" for alleging that the Gore campaign is trying to keep Bush ballots from being counted. "If you have a legal case, bring it," Kerrey challenged Republicans. Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth, who was Gore's Florida campaign chairman, has asked county election officials in the state to reconsider military ballots that were rejected for late postmarks, postmarks from within the United States or lack of witness signatures.

â€¢ In Miami-Dade County, 137 of the 614 precincts have been counted, giving Gore an unofficial net gain of 157 votes in the county.
â€¢ The new -- and only -- Republican on Broward County's three-member election canvassing board assumed his duties today. Circuit Judge Robert Rosenberg replaces Broward's elections supervisor Jane Carroll, 70, who announced her retirement Monday, saying she could not handle the long days of recounting.

â€¢ In Broward County, all of the 609 precincts have been counted, giving Gore an unofficial net gain of 118 votes in the county.

â€¢ Broward County hopes to complete the first part of its hand recount today. In the next phase, election officials plan to make decisions about dimpled chads. Republicans maintain dimpled chads should not be considered valid while Democrats argue that canvassing boards should look at them to see if a voter's intent can be determined.

â€¢ A state court hearing will be held Wednesday in Palm Beach County on a motion by Democrats. They want to force county election officials to adopt a broader standard for deciding what is a valid punch-card vote.

â€¢ A state judge in Miami-Dade County today rejected a bid by Republicans to stop the vote recount there. They had argued that the process allows vote tampering and that county election officials erred when they reversed a decision against a hand recount. Circuit Judge David Tobin said it was not his job to set standards for ballot review.

â€¢ Gore is in Washington, where aides said the vice president is working from home today. There are no public events on his schedule. Gore, who normally spends Thanksgiving in his home state of Tennessee, plans to stay in Washington for Thanksgiving.

â€¢ Bush, who is governor of Texas, spent time today in his office in the Capitol building in Austin. Aides said his schedule for Thanksgiving is subject to change, depending on developments in Florida.

â€¢ In Palm Beach County, 104 of the 531 precincts have been counted, giving Gore an unofficial net gain of 3 votes in the county.

â€¢ Election officials in Palm Beach County plan to suspend counting by 5 p.m. Wednesday in observance of Thanksgiving with no plans to resume counting until Sunday. The local canvassing board, however, will meet over the weekend to review a growing number of challenged ballots.

â€¢ Gore adviser Jack Quinn told CNN's "Larry King Live" that the Florida Supreme Court 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.

â€¢ Barry Richard, the top lawyer for Bush in Florida, told the same program he could not predict what the justices would decide but expected them to "do it as rapidly as they can."

â€¢ Three Texas voters filed a federal lawsuit on Monday claiming Bush's running mate, former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, is a resident of Texas, not Wyoming, and that because the 12th Amendment prohibits the president and vice president from living in the same state, Bush should not be awarded Texas' 32 electoral votes. A similar lawsuit filed in Florida was dismissed.

What's at stake

Gore narrowly leads in the nationwide popular vote and holds a slight edge over Bush in the all-important Electoral College tally. But neither candidate will reach the required 270 electoral votes to be declared the nation's 43rd president without Florida's 25 electors.

Gore's campaign hopes the full hand recounts in the three counties, where as many as 1.7 million ballots were cast, will add enough votes to his statewide total for him to overcome Bush's lead.

CNN National Correspondents Mike Boettcher and Tony Clark, Senior White House Correspondent,Correspondents Jeff Flock, Patty Davis, Frank Buckley, Susan Candiotti, Deborah Feyerick, and contributed to this report, written by CNN. com Senior Writer Jim Morris.