Florida justices reinstate Palm Beach hand recount

By David Jackson and Pete Slover / The Dallas Morning News<br><br><br>TALLAHASSEE, Fla. â€“ With the presidency at stake and the clock ticking, attorneys for Al Gore and George W. Bush spent Thursday working

Thursday, November 16th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

By David Jackson and Pete Slover / The Dallas Morning News

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. â€“ With the presidency at stake and the clock ticking, attorneys for Al Gore and George W. Bush spent Thursday working three different courthouses as well as the court of public opinion.

The Gore team's goal: Permit ballot-by-ballot recounts in three counties that they believe will squeeze the vice president ahead of Mr. Bush in Florida, the state where the White House will be won.

On the Bush side, attorneys said Secretary of State Katherine Harris should be allowed to reject the hand recounts and certify the election shortly after the midnight Friday deadline for receipt of overseas absentee ballots.

Mr. Bush's lead officially stands at 300 votes out of nearly 6 million cast. When the election results are at last certified, the losing side could â€“ if the litigious last nine days are any guide â€“ find itself in the politically unseemly position of asking a court to overturn an election.

On Thursday, the Leon County Courthouse, the Florida Supreme Court and a federal appeals court in Atlanta all saw action.

Late in the afternoon, the state's high court said Palm Beach County could resume its suspended hand recount of ballots pending a court decision. The county had asked for guidance after receiving conflicting opinions from the Republican secretary of state, who said recounts should not continue, and the Democratic attorney general, who said they could.

The Supreme Court decision pleased Gore campaign chairman William Daley, who called it "a victory for everyone who wants to see the votes counted fully and fairly here in Florida."

But former Secretary of State James Baker, who is heading the Bush legal effort, said the court did not address the merits of the manual counts. He mocked the Gore campaign's jubilation as "a superb example of the art of legal spin."

Republicans have charged that hand counting of the punch-card ballots invites tampering and misinterpretation.

With recounts under way in heavily Democratic Broward and Palm Beach counties, Gore aides are counting on the vice president pushing ahead of Mr. Bush in the unofficial Florida vote tally. They said that would put pressure on state officials to count those votes.

Earlier Thursday, Mr. Gore's legal team argued before Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis that Florida's secretary of state should accept updated election returns based on ballot-by-ballot examinations in those counties, as well as Miami-Dade just to the south.

The judge said he would rule Friday morning.

"From inception, during the course of this litigation, the secretary has tried to cut off the manual counting of ballots," Mr. Gore's attorneys said in a legal brief.

An attorney for Ms. Harris, Joe Klock, said she acted scrupulously to adhere to Florida law and a court order instructing her to review late-arriving tallies. "The secretary of state took enormous care to make sure she did not violate the order," Mr. Klock said.

Back and forth

Ms. Harris originally said all counties must complete any recounts by 4 p.m. Dallas time Tuesday. But Judge Lewis ruled earlier this week that Ms. Harris must at least review any manual recounts submitted by counties after the Tuesday deadline.

Ms. Harris then required counties to justify any late submissions. Once she heard from the counties, she said they had not provided sufficient justification.

Attorneys for Mr. Bush and Ms. Harris told the judge that Ms. Harris was careful to lay out clear standards for granting an extension, which were met by none of the counties asking for extra time. To grant Mr. Gore's request, they said, would give counties a license to ignore state deadlines and extend recounts indefinitely.

Attorneys for Mr. Gore disagreed. "She did not consider any facts and circumstances," said lawyer Dexter Douglass.

On another front, attorneys for Mr. Bush went to an Atlanta-based federal appeals court in an effort to declare the entire hand-counting system unconstitutional.

GOP attorneys said the manual recounts can be used to favor one group of voters over another.

"Eight days after Florida's presidential vote, the entire nation is witnessing the disintegration of a process that was designed to elect America's president," Mr. Bush's attorneys said in their submission.

Democrats said the lawsuit mocks frequent Republican claims that federal courts should not inject themselves into the affairs of an individual state. "This case is simply not appropriate for federal court intervention of any kind at this point in the proceeding," Mr. Gore's attorneys countered.

Back in Tallahassee, the legal pleadings piled up in the state's high court, the final collection point for the election disputes bubbling up from around the state. By late Thursday, the court had not set a hearing on the more than 20 motions, amendments and petitions filed since Wednesday morning.

Legal flurry

The state Supreme Court also is expected to receive appeals from Circuit Judge Lewis' decision, as well as from other trial courts considering election cases.

All of this legal activity is in addition to another set of lawsuits that could yet affect the election: complaints by voters in Palm Beach County that "butterfly" ballots led them to mark their vote cards incorrectly. They are seeking a county revote using new ballots.

The county's hand recount of 462,000 ballots began Thursday evening after the ruling by the Florida Supreme Court. The county canvassing board planned to work until midnight, then resume at 7 a.m. Friday. Among the GOP observers: Dallas County Judge Lee Jackson.

A crowd of 600 Bush supporters descended upon the Palm Beach emergency operations center Thursday afternoon, voicing support for Mr. Bush and Secretary of State Harris. They carried signs saying "W stands for winner" and "Have lottery recount. My aunt punched wrong number."

A handful of Democrats showed up, too, toting signs saying "W is for Weasel" and "Jeb Bush: Thou shalt not steal my right to vote."

Starting from scratch

Palm Beach County planned to use 60 ballot counters, divided into teams of two, and an equal number of observers from each party.Canvassing board chairman Charles Burton said the board would start the recount from scratch, even though it already examined about 4,600 ballots during a mini-hand count of three precincts Saturday.

That's because a judge ruled Wednesday that the board must not automatically discard ballots with "dimpled," or indented, chads â€“ the tiny pieces of paper on the ballot that are meant to be punched out.

The board had previously applied a standard in which at least one corner of the chad must be detached for the vote to count.

One Republican observer from Saturday's count, Mark Klimek, said he saw ballot counters twisting ballots and handling them in a manner that may cause chads to fall out.

Staff writer Charles Ornstein in West Palm Beach, Fla., contributed to this report.