Bush leads Gore by 300 votes in Florida

2:00 PM

TALLAHASSEE - Republican George W. Bush leads Democrat Al Gore by 300 votes, Florida's chief election official said, but she gave counties another half-day to appeal for more time to continue tallying their votes by hand.

Florida's Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris held off announcing final certification of the vote from Florida's 67 counties, leaving the presidential election still unresolved.

Her announcement came at the end of a day of legal tussles that appeared to leave Texas Gov. Bush still holding the advantage over Vice-President Gore in the struggle to become the 43rd president of the United States.

Harris said she would consider written arguments from jurisdictions requesting more time for manual recounts if they were submitted by 2 pm Wednesday EST (8 am NZ Time).

The state also has a midnight EST on Friday (6 pm Saturday NZT) deadline for absentee ballots from overseas to arrive and be counted.

"I'm requiring a written statement of the facts and circumstances that would cause these counties to believe that a change should be made before the final certification of the statewide vote," Harris said.

At least two counties - Palm Beach and Miami-Dade - are proceeding with either full or partial hand recounts. Volusia County completed its manual recount which gave Gore an extra 98 votes.

The winner of Florida will receive the state's 25 electoral votes, enabling either Bush or Gore to surpass the 270 needed to win the presidency.

Harris gave the result of the vote so far: 2,910,492 votes for Bush and 2,919,192 for Gore.

Earlier, Harris had given all Florida jurisdictions until 5 p.m. Tuesday (11:00 am NZ Time) to report their results and her deadline was upheld by a circuit court judge.

It was a clear attempt to end vote-counting from last week's disputed presidential election before more hand recounts got underway.

Gore's legal advisers urged individual counties to carry on counting ballots by hand past the deadline.

Democratic-dominated Palm Beach County, where many election irregularities were reported, voted to resume tallying its 460,000 votes by hand, which was expected to take several more days.

The court ruling did leave one window open for late-arriving results to be included in the count, which the Democratic team seized upon as their way out of what has become a fiendishly complicated legal thicket.

Democrats have sought recounts by hand in four counties.

"The most important thing now is for the counties whose manual counts are in progress to continue and complete their work," said former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, representing Gore in Florida.

"The court's opinion on this point is tantamount to the injunction we sought. We call now on the four counties to move ahead with their hand counts in accordance with this decision," said Christopher.

The Bush campaign gave notice of its intention to ask a federal appeals court to halt manual vote counts if they continued past the deadline.

David Boies, the newest member of the Gore legal team who represented the government in its anti-trust case against Microsoft Corp., said more court action remained possible.

"If the (Florida) secretary of state refuses to accept amended returns based on the recount and violates what this court has ruled is her duty, which is to accept those results unless she has a good reason not to, then we may be back in court," Boies said.

The winner of the state's 25 electoral votes would pass the 270 needed to be elected president. Neither can reach 270 without Florida.

- REUTERS

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