Fight for the White house: Up and down and back to front

MIAMI - Republican George W. Bush took his White House battle to the United States Supreme Court yesterday as Democrat Al Gore suffered a blow in his presidential bid when a Florida county decided not to include votes recounted by hand.

In a turbulent day during which Republican vice-presidential candidate Dick Cheney suffered a mild heart attack, the fight for the White House grew more rancorous by the hour over how and which votes should be recounted in Florida, which will decide who wins the presidential election.

Bush's campaign said it had filed an appeal in the US Supreme Court to overturn a Florida high court ruling on Wednesday to include recounted votes from three Florida counties in the final vote if they are filed by a Sunday deadline.

Ted Olson, counsel for the Bush-Cheney recount effort, told a news conference in Washington the Texas Governor's campaign would seek an expedited Supreme Court ruling by December 12, the final deadline for Florida's 25 electoral votes to be certified.

In a stunning about-turn earlier, Miami-Dade County in Florida announced it would not amend its original vote tally with ballots counted by hand.

The Gore campaign tried to get the decision overturned but a Florida appeals court turned them down. Last night, the Democrats said they would appeal that ruling to the Florida Supreme Court.

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, which would give him the White House.

Miami-Dade County election officials said they called off the hand recount of 700,000 votes because there was no time to meet the deadline and so the county would stick with its result from an earlier machine recount.

With the White House at stake, partisan bickering also reached fever pitch over whether so-called dimpled ballots - when the holes in ballots are dented but not punched out - should be included in the final tally.

Gore appeared to score a legal victory in Palm Beach County, where a court said officials counting ballots could accept dimpled ballots, a decision that could yield more votes for Gore, so long as voter intention was clear.

Broward County has been the only of Florida's counties to give Gore any votes - the Vice-President picked up just 137 in the hand recount there but that number could change as 2000 "challenged" ballots are reviewed in Broward.

In another dramatic development, Cheney, aged 59, was admitted to George Washington University hospital in Washington suffering from chest and shoulder pains and had a common two-hour medical procedure to widen a narrowed artery.

Doctors said initially that Cheney, who has a history of heart problems, had not suffered a heart attack, but later updated his condition.

Dr Alan Wasserman, said there has been a very slight heart attack but stressed the condition was not serious.

"We continue to expect a full recovery."

Using tough language at a news conference in Austin, Texas, Bush said he believed the Florida Supreme Court had "overreached" itself in its ruling on Wednesday 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."

In a snipe at the Gore campaign, Bush urged the Vice-President to ensure overseas military ballots were counted in the election.

However, the Bush camp has decided not to seek a recount in Wisconsin, which Gore won by 5700 votes, in the interest of moving toward an end point in the election.

Dimpled ballots have become a crucial issue in the election, with the Republicans arguing that these cards should be discarded and the Democrats saying they must be included.

In his ruling on standards to be used in Palm County's crucial manual recounts of votes, Judge Jorge LaBarga said the county should reject any ballot where the voter's intent was not clear.

It could accept dimples or partial perforations only when "they fairly and satisfactorily ascertain the intent of the voter."

The Democrats believe that if these ballots are included in the recount, Gore's chances of passing Bush's slim lead in Florida will be boosted considerably, giving the Vice-President the state's 25 electoral votes needed to clinch the White House.

- REUTERS

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