Lawyers for Bush and Gore advance legal cases

9:00 AM

TALLAHASSEE - Lawyers for Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore have expanded their fight over the future of hand recounts in Florida's disputed presidential vote.

Bush's team joined Florida's Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Republican, in asking the state Supreme Court to order counties to halt manual recounts and to consolidate all the suits filed over the election in one Tallahassee court.

Gore's legal advisers, who say the vice president's vote has been undercounted and only hand examination of each ballot could resolve the issue, responded by asking the state Supreme Court to make the decision.

The stakes are huge. Both Bush, the Texas governor who currently leads in Florida by a mere 300 votes out of nearly 6 million cast, and Gore, who leads the national popular vote, need the state's 25 electoral college votes to get the 270 needed to become the next president.

With 8 days passed since the nation voted and still no president-elect, the fight for the White House came down to legal punch and counterpunch with the maneuvering changing almost hourly.

On the federal court level, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta has agreed to hear another Republican bid to end manual recounts. The full 12-judge court will hear appeals of lower court opinions that there was no federal jurisdiction involved in the Florida election.

As an example of the constantly changing political landscape, two Democratic counties at the centre of hand-counting controversy in Florida changed positions.

Palm Beach County had planned to start the hand recount today but then decided not to while seeking a judicial ruling. Broward County officials decided to go ahead with a recount after voting the other way earlier this week.

Palm Beach met a 2 pm EST (8 am today NZT) deadline set by Harris for counties to provide written explanation of why they needed to continue counting ballots.

An official state count of reports submitted from all 67 counties showed on Tuesday that Bush had 2,910,492 votes to 2,910,192 for Gore.

Those totals were to change at least once more when all the overseas mail-in ballots were counted. There was a midnight Friday (6 pm Saturday NZT) deadline for those ballots to be received.

Gore's team was trying to make that deadline less rigid and allow more time to complete the hand counts which comprise more than 460,000 votes in Palm Beach and more than 500,000 in Broward.

Harris began today's legal skirmishing by filing an 11-page petition asking Florida's Supreme Court to order Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties to end manual recounts until the courts determine whether election results certified yesterday can be modified.

She also asked the Supreme Court to make a Leon County Circuit Court the "exclusive venue" for any proceeding to contest the presidential election.

Bush's legal team joined the lawsuit later in the day saying the initial vote tally and the mandatory recount resulted in most voters in the Florida choosing the Texas governor to be president.

But Gore's campaign then said it would ask the state's Supreme Court to resolve quickly the issue of recounts.

"We will be asking the Supreme Court of Florida itself to resolve critical questions," said former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who is observing the recount for Gore.

Gore legal adviser David Boies said his campaign's petition would also ask the high court to set a "reasonable" deadline for the recounts, adding he expected the turmoil over the undecided election to end within days.

Bush lawyer Theodore Olson said the Gore campaign was issuing an "increasingly desperate degree" of statements, measures, litigations and efforts to prolong the final result of the election.

To show the extent to which the legal fight was being carried, a state judge in West Palm Beach ruled that local officials should be the ones to decide which ballot markings - like "dimples" on ballots that had not been completely punched - are acceptable.

In what could be another hurdle to making the final result known, Republicans were considering whether to ask for a recount of ballots in Iowa as Gore's margin over Bush shrank significantly on yesterday after discovery of a clerical error in Sioux County.

Unofficial returns at the end of last week showed Gore carried Iowa and its seven electoral votes by 5,121 popular votes out of 1.3 million cast. But as the state certified those results, his lead fell to around 4,000.

Bush and Gore remain out of sight, leaving their lawyers and campaign staff to comment. Bush was staying at his ranch near Crawford, Texas, while Gore remained in Washington, D.C.

- REUTERS

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