Cheney in hospital but Bush gets boost in recount wrangle

9:00 AM

MIAMI - Democrat Al Gore suffered a new blow overnight in his fight with Republican George W. Bush for the US presidency when a key Florida county called off a hand count of votes.

In another dramatic development in the rancorous contest for the White House, Bush's vice presidential running mate Dick Cheney was admitted to a Washington hospital with chest pains.

In Florida's Miami-Dade county, election officials said they could not meet a deadline of Monday (NZ time) for the recounted result to be filed. The deadline had been imposed yesterday by the state's Supreme Court. Miami-Dade now says it will stick with its result from an earlier machine recount.

Whoever is victorious in Florida will get the 25 additional electoral college votes needed to win the race for the White House, which has become bogged down by a myriad of legal challenges filed by both sides since the Nov. 7 election.

Gore campaign chairman William Daley said he was disappointed by the Miami-Dade decision and the Democrats would challenge it in court.

"We will immediately be seeking an order directing the Dade County Board of Canvassers to resume the manual recount," he said outside the vice president's official residence in Washington.

Gore was banking on picking up enough votes in Miami-Dade, Florida's most populous county, and two other Democrat-leaning counties in south Florida to overtake Bush's 930-vote lead in the state.

In a day of high drama, Bush's running mate, Dick Cheney, who has suffered heart problems in the past, was admitted to George Washington University hospital complaining of chest and shoulder pain.

Bush told reporters he had spoken by telephone to Cheney, 59, and that he had not suffered a heart attack.

"He was feeling chest pains and it turns out that subsequent tests - the blood tests and the initial EKG - showed that he had no heart attack. I am pleased to report that," Bush, the governor of Texas, said from the state capitol in Austin.

Using tough language, Bush said he believed the Florida Supreme Court had over-reached in its ruling yesterday to allow hand recounted votes to be included from three counties and that he still expected to win the state and hence the White House.

"I believe Secretary Cheney and I won the vote in Florida. I believe some are determined to keep counting in an effort to change the legitimate result," Bush said.

In a snipe at the Gore campaign, he urged the vice president to ensure overseas military ballots were counted in the election.

The state Supreme Court ruling was felt in US markets, where stocks fell due to indecision caused by the new deadline. The Nasdaq composite index reached a new low for the year hitting 2,758.47 in mid-morning trade.

Miami-Dade County election board officials said it would be impossible for them to complete a full hand recount of the county's 700,000 votes by the Monday deadline.

Counting, however, resumed in Palm Beach county, where officials there said they expected to complete the total hand count in time.

Broward County had all but finished its hand recount and was tallying absentee ballots. Election officials said when this was finished, they would move on to considering 1,200 to 2,000 "dimpled" ballots.

With the White House at stake, partisan bickering reached fever pitch over whether so-called dimpled ballots - ballots in which the voting circles had been dented but not punched out - should be included in the final tally.

Dimpled ballots have become a crucial issue in the election and Gore's team has filed a petition in a Palm Beach court arguing that dimpled ballots should be accepted because they indicated voter intent. The Republicans dispute this and say they should be discarded.

The Democrats believe if these ballots are included in the recount, Gore's chances of passing Bush's slim lead in Florida will be boosted considerably.

The areas where the votes are being recounted are heavily Democratic and Gore would be more likely than Bush to pick up extra votes if the dimpled ballots are included.

Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Republican, wanted to certify Bush as victor on Nov. 18, but the state's Supreme Court blocked that plan while it considered the case.

Judge Charles Burton, chairman of the Palm Beach Canvassing Board, the local election authority, said the dimpled votes would change the final outcome in his area.

"If we were told to count every impression in the cards, you could be talking of a swing in votes in the thousands," Burton said in an interview on CNN television. "If we're talking about the dimples that just pierced the paper, (then we're talking) in the hundreds."

- REUTERS

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