Officials order hand recount of Florida county vote

PALM BEACH - Election officials in Palm Beach, Florida, last night ordered a laborious hand recount of hundreds of thousands of votes.

Their decision came after a manual recount of a small percentage of ballots showed a net gain in ballots cast for Vice-President Al Gore.

But George W. Bush's Republican Party has sent the presidential race into the courts by requesting an order blocking the manual recounts from continuing in Florida's improbably close vote.

A federal judge has set a hearing on the Bush application for today in Miami.

The Texas Governor holds a narrow lead in Florida after an unofficial recount, with an unknown number of overseas ballots yet to be counted.

The winner of the state stands to gain an electoral college majority and become the nation's 43rd President.

"We're all in limbo," Bush said.

After a hand count at the weekend of 1 per cent of the ballots cast in the presidential election, officials tallied 33 new votes cast for Gore and 14 for Bush, resulting in a net gain of 19 votes for Gore.

The electoral authorities considered that this discrepancy was enough to put in doubt the result for Palm Beach, and therefore the entire election.

In a machine recount announced at the same time as the results of the hand count, Gore received a net gain of 33 votes.

The Palm Beach Canvassing Board recounted more than 4500 ballots by hand.

The three members of the board reviewed questionable ballots, overseen by representatives of the Democratic and Republican parties.

Democrats had said that if the sample hand count yielded additional votes for Gore that would change the election, they would seek to have all the votes in the county counted by hand.

Bush, who currently holds a razor-thin lead in Florida, and Gore are locked in a battle for the state's block of 25 electoral votes, which will determine who wins the presidency.

The Republican lawsuit to stop further hand recounts cites a need to "preserve the integrity, equality, and finality" of the vote.

Former US Secretary of State James A. Baker, a Republican, said that with a manual recount, "human error, individual subjectivity, and decisions to 'determine the voters' intent,' would replace precision machinery in tabulating millions of small marks and fragile hole punches."

The Democratic Party responded forcefully a few hours later, calling for the withdrawal of the suit and expressing confidence that it would prevail in court.

"The hand count can be completed expeditiously and it should be," said another former Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, speaking on Gore's behalf.

He added that Bush, as Governor of Texas, had signed legislation in 1997 specifying that hand recounts be used to settle certain disputed elections - a position at odds with the present stated Republican preferences.

The partial recount in Palm Beach County finished in the middle of the night (local time).

County officials ordered the full recount by hand after discovering more errors in the painstaking review of several precincts.

Gore supporters claim a poorly designed ballot may have caused them to vote inadvertently for conservative Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan, who received a tiny fraction of the nation's vote.

Carol Roberts, a county commissioner and a member of the canvassing commission, argued for the labour-intensive manual count of all 531 Palm Beach County precincts, saying the errors found thus far "clearly would affect the national vote."

A lawyer for the Republican Party, Mark Wallace, objected.

"We vigorously lodge our protest and plead with you not to put the county through that," he said.

The unsettled situation in Florida held the candidates and their supporters in suspense and the nation in thrall, and sent the 2000 election on an unpredictable course.

Republican strategists, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that pending the outcome of the legal challenge, they were considering challenging narrow Gore victories in Wisconsin, Oregon or elsewhere, or possibly seeking recounts in additional counties in Florida.

"All options are open, of course," Bush told reporters at his ranch outside Waco, Texas, with running mate Dick Cheney at his side.

Christopher, asked later how far he was willing to go legally, offered a noncommittal response.

"We've been considering various other options," he said. "No decision has been reached."

An unofficial tally by the Associated Press of an initial recount in Florida's 67 counties showed the Texas Governor with a 327-vote lead over the Vice-President.

Florida state officials said their recount showed Bush leading by 960 votes with 66 counties reporting.

Palm Beach, the 67th county, is under a local court order not to release results, pending a hearing resulting from one of eight lawsuits filed by voters.

Voters in Florida record their votes by punching a square hole next to the name of their candidate on the ballot form. The piece of paper that falls out is called a "chad."

Many of the disputes centre on whether the hole was properly punched, if the chad remained attached to the ballot or if there is only an indentation in the ballot form.

After three hours of counting, the canvassing board liberalised its criteria for counting votes.



The Palm Beach County Canvassing Board yesterday announced a new criterion for counting votes: if a punched hole has one, two or three of its corners detached, the vote on a ballot will count.

Tucker Eskew, speaking for the Bush campaign, told reporters that he found the new procedure "troubling."

It "does not inspire confidence in the American people, regardless of the details," he said. "This is a grave matter."

Further complicating the outcome, officials have to wait until Friday to make sure all absentee ballots from Florida voters living overseas are counted.

These could clinch the state for either candidate.

Miami police were yesterday looking after two locked ballot boxes found days after the election - one in a downtown hotel and the other in a church - but they may contain just supplies, not votes.

A Miami police officer, speaking at a meeting called by the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People to hear testimony of alleged irregularities in the election, revealed that a box had been found on Friday at the Sheraton Hotel.

Police Lieutenant Diego Ochoa said police sealed the box with evidence paper and were keeping it at police headquarters to hand over to election officials.

A police spokesman later confirmed the account but said the box found at the hotel was believed to contain only supplies.

Another box found at a church on Saturday had also been handed in, said the spokesman.

Both the hotel and the church had been used as polling stations.

Police had not opened either box and were keeping them in a safe at their headquarters until election officials came to claim them.

A poll worker said it was almost certain the ballot boxes contained only supplies.

- REUTERS, AGENCIES

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