Florida Can Reject Manual Tallies, Judge Rules
By DAVID ESPO
.c The Associated Press
(Nov. 17) -- George W. Bush won a key court victory in Florida's high-stakes presidential election Friday when a state judge backed Secretary of State Katherine Harris' decision to reject manual recounts under way in two Democratic counties. The recanvassing continued anyway, and Al Gore's advisers said they would appeal the ruling.
Circuit Judge Terry Lewis issued his brief order as officials in all 67 Florida counties were preparing to begin the tabulation of an estimated 2,600 overseas absentee ballots.
Bush holds a 300-vote lead in the state that will decide the winner of the presidential election, and Harris is expected to certify a winner on Saturday - subject to yet another court challenge - once the overseas votes are counted.
Little more than an hour after the ruling, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III said Bush and running mate Dick Cheney were ''understandably pleased.'' Underscoring the GOP ticket's eagerness to close out Gore's challenge, Baker said Republicans look forward to counting overseas ballots ''so that the process of achieving a final result to the election in Florida is not subject to further delays.''
Dick Cheney, appearing Thursday night on ABC's PrimeTime Live,'' said he and Bush are prepared to declare victory Saturday if Florida certifies them as the winners of the state's 25 electoral votes - even if hand counts are continuing.
''That would be a serious mistake to do that,'' former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, representing Gore, countered Friday on ABC's ''Good Morning America.'' He said ''we'll take all the legal steps we can'' if that happens
Both sides in the election contest assume that Bush will benefit when the overseas votes are counted, making Gore's attempt to win recounts of more than one million ballots essential to his effort to overtake his rival.
In Broward County, the area around Ft. Lauderdale, officials said Gore had a gain of 25 votes, with the recount completed of 102 of 609 precincts. A separate recount was under way in Palm Beach County, and Democrats hoped to launch one later in Miami-Dade.
Lewis' court order, read by a court clerk and broadcast live nationally, was succinct.
Based on the ''limited evidence presented, it appears that the secretary has exercised her reasoned judgment ... applied them to the facts ... and made her decision. My order requires nothing more,'' it said.
In a brief statement, Harris said she would ''continue to follow the election procedures provided by Florida law. She added, ''we anticipate receiving the certifications of the overseas absentee ballots from all counties by noon tomorrow.''
Lawyers and political aides said they expected Gore to appeal Lewis' order to the state Supreme Court in Tallahassee. If so, it would be the second election-related case in as many days to come before the state's highest court, a sign that the nation's postelection drama may be nearing a conclusion.
On Thursday, in a brief unanimous order, the state's high court justices ruled that the recounts could continue, but took no position on whether Harris should be required to take them into account when she certified the results of the election.
''Let the will of the people be done,'' Gore campaign chairman William Daley said Thursday after the high court ruling. Other Democrats warned of legal action if Harris refuses to accept the results of the hand recanvasses.
Bush's campaign chairman said Harris' vote certification deadline was fixed by state law and ''must be honored.'' Only the tally of the absentee ballots from overseas remains to be rolled into previously certified vote totals showing Bush with a 300-vote margin, Don Evans insisted.
And then, he said, ''Win or lose, this election will be over.'' But a rash of legal actions by both sides made such a decisive ending improbable.
Officials in the state's 67 counties said they would begin tallying their overseas ballots as soon as they received Friday morning mail delivery.
At the same time, officials in Broward and Palm Beach counties - heavily Democratic areas around Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach - were working their way by hand through hundreds of thousands of ballots. The Gore campaign is hoping the results of those recounts, as well as one the vice president is seeking in Miami-Dade County, will let him vault ahead of Bush.
Still, Gore aides conceded the recounts wouldn't be completed before Harris' deadline, adding to the prospect of more legal action in a case that has generated plenty.
The controversy's lengthening docket ran to a federal appeals court in Atlanta, where judges are considering the Bush campaign's bid to shut down the recounts.
The federal court also agreed to consider a related case filed by three Bush supporters from Brevard County. They claim their rights are being violated because their counties are not recanvassing votes by hand.
In a controversy drenched in politics, no one escaped scrutiny.
Democrats noted that Harris is a Republican and staunch Bush supporter. Republicans pointed out that all seven members of the Florida Supreme Court owe their appointments to Democrats.
There were moments of emotion as well as political spin.
''We're going to have a trial,'' Republican activist William Scherer said as he burst in - subpoenas in hand - on elections officials recounting votes in Broward County.
''The nation is watching you. The state of Florida is watching you. And Broward County is watching you.''
Republicans also released federal court affidavits from at least five witnesses who contend they observed possible ballot tampering in earlier hand recounts in Palm Beach County.
The pivotal event Thursday was a brief ruling by the Florida Supreme Court that said there was ''no legal impediment'' to continued recounts. The unanimous, one-paragraph order did not address whether Harris should be required to accept the results, leaving that issue for another day.
AP-NY-11-17-00 1125EST
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Congress Gets Ready for Possible Election Role
By ALAN FRAM
.c The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (Nov. 16) - Republican and Democratic leaders prepared Thursday for the possibility that Congress might elect the next president, though members of both parties said they considered that unlikely.
Among the possibilities: A process, spelled out in a 19th century law, by which Congress might annul Florida's contested electoral votes. Under the Constitution, that could send the presidential election to the House and leave the vice president's selection to the Senate, creating the improbable possibility of a president and vice president from different parties.
Amid escalating political tensions, top lawmakers from both parties were issuing memos or compiling historical and procedural information about Congress' role in the elections.
Among them were Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Calif., chairman of the House Administration Committee, who said he hoped to have an objective report on the subject from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service by Monday.
``There are many backwater areas of our jobs that aren't visited on a weekly or monthly basis,'' Thomas said.
A separate two-page memo by House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, described a process by which the House and Senate could vote to reject some or all of a state's electoral votes. His paper does not mention any states or candidates by name, and DeLay spokesman Jonathan Baron said the lawmaker ``neither expects nor desires this to be decided in the House.''
But with the high-stakes Florida battle between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore still raging, some congressional Democrats viewed the GOP research as the start of an effort to thwart Gore's election.
``I don't think the country would stand for that,'' Rep. Martin Frost of Texas, a member of the Democratic House leadership, said of any House effort to invalidate a state's votes. ``That would be a blatant partisan act by Republicans.''
Frost said he was updating a report he had prepared 20 years ago on House procedures for electing a president.
Others researching the issue included House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo.; Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Administration panel; Rep. David Price, D-N.C., a former political science professor; and Democratic and GOP Senate leaders.
In a part of the presidential election process usually ignored, each states' electors - chosen by the voters on Election Day - will meet in their state capitals on Dec. 18 to cast their votes for president. A joint session of the new Congress will convene on Jan. 6 to officially count those ballots.
It would take only a single member from both the House and Senate to demand a vote on nullifying Florida's electors. A majority of both chambers would be needed to invalidate them.
The process has been used once, in 1969, when a pair of lawmakers unsuccessfully challenged a North Carolina electoral vote cast for George Wallace. Among those voting to disallow that electoral ballot were Bush's father, Rep. George Bush, R-Texas, who became president 20 years later.
With some races still incomplete, House Republicans will have a slender majority of about 10 seats in the 435-member chamber next year.
It could be tougher for Republicans in the Senate, where a victory by Democratic challenger Maria Cantwell in her ongoing Washington state race against incumbent GOP Sen. Slade Gorton would produce a 50-50 split. With Gore vice president until the new president is sworn in on Jan. 20, Gore could break a tie if the Senate was voting on whether to reject Florida votes for his presidential candidacy.
Unclear, however, is whether it takes a majority of the 538 electors - 270 votes - to elect a president, or a majority of the electoral votes that Congress has allowed. Since knocking out Florida's 25 electoral votes would leave Gore with less than 270 votes but a lead in the rest of the tally, Republicans might argue that 270 votes are needed for anyone to prevail.
That could throw the presidential vote to the House, where each state - no matter the size of its congressional delegation - would get one vote. The District of Columbia and U.S. territories could not vote.
Republicans will hold a 28-18 edge in state delegations plus four ties, pending a pair of still-contested races. States with ties could not cast votes.
Many observers think most lawmakers would vote along party lines.
But GOP Rep. Constance Morella of Maryland told The Washington Post that she would consider voting for Gore, who carried her state, though an aide said the process was undecided. The Maryland delegation is split four-to-four between the two parties.
Democrats hold a 17-13 edge in the House delegation from Texas, Bush's home state, and some might struggle over how to vote.
Senators would each have one vote in selecting the vice president. Gore could break a tie and deliver the decisive vote for his running mate, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.
AP-NY-11-16-00 1805EST
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November 17, 2000
A HISTORY OF CONFLICT
Palm Beach County Had Prior Complaints About Counts
By DON VAN NATTA Jr.
EST PALM BEACH, Fla., Nov. 16 — The Election Day confusion in Palm Beach County came as no surprise to State Representative Curt Levine.
On Oct. 3, Mr. Levine went to the polls to cast a vote for himself in a run-off election for a state House seat representing Delray Beach and Boca Raton. For several frustrating moments, Mr. Levine said, he struggled to get one of the city's 30-year- old voting machines to accept his paper ballot.
"I had a real problem getting the card to fit into that voting machine," said Mr. Levine, 52, the incumbent. "It took three tries before it went in all the way."
Late that night, Mr. Levine learned that he had lost by 88 votes. His narrow defeat in that election — the last in Palm Beach County before the chaos of Nov. 7 — raised many of the same issues now confronting the county's embattled canvassing board: demands for a recount, confusion over the ballot, a high number of double votes.
Mr. Levine, a Democrat, said that the three members of the canvassing board should not be surprised by the current controversy, either. "They certainly were on notice that something like this could happen," he said. "My complaint is not politically motivated, and it's not sour grapes. Historically, their office has pushed under the rug the fact that the system is badly flawed, and they have made a lot of mistakes.
"In the presidential race, they have no choice, because the whole world is watching," Mr. Levine continued. "But they don't like to do recounts. I think they're afraid to find how wrong the voter machines can be."
In another election in September, a candidate for the State Senate, Beverly Green, lost to a Republican by 14 votes. Ms. Green sought a hand recount, but the canvassing board rejected her request, ruling there was no indication of fraud or a machine malfunction. She did get a machine recount, which showed she lost by 11 votes.
Tonight Ms. Green accused the board of hypocrisy. "There seems to be a double standard," she said in an interview on CNN. "I find it so strange."
Nationwide, about 2 percent of ballots cast in presidential elections are not recorded because they are marked for two or more candidates or for none.
But in the presidential election in Palm Beach County, 19,120 ballots, or about 4 percent of those cast, were thrown out because of double votes.
On some 10,000 ballots, or about 2 percent, the machine count indicated no selection for president. It is with those ballots that Democrats believe they have the best chance to make up votes in the hand recount, scheduled to resume Friday at 7 a.m., when workers look for "hanging" or "swinging" chads, the tiny bits of paper that are detached from a ballot to mark a vote.
Palm Beach County has traditionally had a higher number of double- votes than other counties in Florida, but experts are split on the reason — the punch-card system or mistakes by voters. Palm Beach County uses Votomatic machines, which were developed in the 1960's, and I.B.M. punch-card technology. Punch ballots are used in 27 of Florida's 67 counties.
Lawyers for Vice President Al Gore have been researching the accuracy of the voting machines, an issue that came up this week when Florida's director of elections, Clay Roberts, ruled that hand recounts could be conducted only if voting equipment was proved to be faulty.
The state's attorney general, Robert A. Butterworth, a Democrat, disagreed with that opinion. And the Palm Beach County canvassing board asked the Florida Supreme Court for guidance; late this afternoon, the high court said the county could continue its hand recount.
A senior member of Mr. Gore's legal team, who asked not to be identified, said: "The worst machines in the state are in Palm Beach County. They are old and are the cause of numerous problems. We have a presidential election where the margin of votes is one one-thousandths of a percent, but the machines have a much greater chance than that of making a mistake."
For now, the challenge in eight lawsuits by county voters is over the legality of the design of the notorious "butterfly" ballot used in the presidential election. On Friday, voters who say that the butterfly ballot caused them to vote for the wrong presidential candidate will try to persuade Judge Jorge Baraga of Circuit Court to declare the ballot illegal and order a new vote. Lawyers for the voters say they will argue that many of the 3,407 votes cast for the Reform Party candidate, Patrick J. Buchanan, were intended for Mr. Gore, whose name was on the opposite half of the ballot's face. They say they are also prepared to argue that voters selected two or more presidential candidates on the 19,120 discarded ballots because of confusion over the ballot's design.
"If the will of the voters of Palm Beach County matters, then something has to be done about the ballot's legality," said Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor who is helping lawyers for voters who filed the lawsuits here. "I don't think a reasonable person of good will allow hundreds or perhaps a thousand ballots in which the people intended to vote for Al Gore to be discounted."
Lawyers plan to argue that voter confusion over the butterfly ballot was reported in precincts all over the county just moments after the polls opened at 7 a.m. on Nov. 7.
Lawyers for the Democratic National Committee complained twice in writing to Theresa LePore, the election supervisor who designed the ballot. In a letter faxed at 11:24 a.m. on that Tuesday, Robert M. Brochin, a lawyer for the Democrats, complained about "voter confusion," asking Ms. LePore to send out a written advisory telling voters to pay particular attention to ballot so they would punch the correct number for their candidate.
By midafternoon, complaints continued to flood into Democratic headquarters here; Ms. LePore had still not sent out a written advisory. Mr. Brochin sent another letter, at 2:57 p.m. This time, the Democrats had numerous reports of double voting. Mr. Brochin asked Ms. LePore to instruct poll workers to advise people that they should "only vote for one presidential candidate."
"Such oral instructions and written advisory will avoid voter confusion," Mr. Brochin wrote. "Thank you for your immediate attention to this matter."
That day, Ms. LePore sent out a written advisory: "Attention all poll workers. Please remind all voters coming in that they are to vote only for one (1) presidential candidate and that they are to punch the hole next to the arrow next to the number next to the candidate they wish to vote for."
But Democratic lawyers said that the emergency advisory did not reach all of Palm Beach County's 531 precincts.
By the next day, the election results showed 3,407 votes for Mr. Buchanan, with most of his support in precincts with large numbers of black or elderly Jewish voters. Of a sample of 144 double votes from a partial hand recount this weekend, 80 ballots showed votes for both Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Gore.
"It's clear that a majority of the double votes in Palm Beach County that were disqualified were intended to be votes for Al Gore," Mr. Dershowitz said.
In his runoff election, Mr. Levine said, the canvassing board refused his request for a recount.
"The comment from Theresa LePore was that, historically, there is always a lot of overvoting and it would not make much of a difference in my race," Mr. Levine said. "It is frustrating. Why would people vote twice and invalidate their own ballot? The county prefers to blame the people. I blame the system."
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BUSH PREPARED TO DECLARE VICTORY TOMORROW IF FLA CERTIFIES
Deadline For Certifying Votes Nears
By David Espo
AP Political Writer
Friday, Nov. 17, 2000; 8:51 a.m. EST
Resuming a process that may count for everything – or nothing – in deciding who will be the next president, Florida election workers picked through stacks of ballots Friday in a manual tally at the heart of the legal and political battle between Al Gore and George W. Bush for the White House.
Ten days after the nation voted, the choice of a 43rd president remained mired in a stew of court challenges, hand recounts in several Florida counties and overseas ballots that had to be received by midnight Friday to be counted by the state.
Palm Beach County workers, after about a five-hour break, resumed manual recounts Friday morning, to review some 462,000 ballots as Democratic and Republican representatives looked over their shoulders.
A state court ruling was expected Friday on whether Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Republican, can certify the state's election results as she has said she will before recounts are completed in heavily Democratic Palm Beach and Broward counties.
The Florida Supreme Court ruled there's no legal reason to stop the manual recounts.
"Let the will of the people be done," Gore campaign chairman William Daley said Thursday after the high court ruling. Other Democrats warned of legal action if Harris refuses to accept the results of the hand recanvasses.
Bush's campaign chairman said Harris' vote certification deadline was fixed by state law and "must be honored." Only the tally of the estimated 2,600 absentee ballots from overseas remains to be rolled into previously certified vote totals showing Bush with a 300-vote margin, Don Evans insisted.
And then, he said, "Win or lose, this election will be over." But a rash of legal actions by both sides made such a decisive ending improbable.
Bush's running mate, Dick Cheney, said on ABC's "Primetime Live" that he and Bush are prepared to declare victory Saturday if Florida certifies them as the winner of the state's 25 electoral votes – even if hand counts are continuing.
"That would be a serious mistake to do that," former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, representing Gore, said Friday on ABC's "Good Morning America." He said "we'll take all the legal steps we can" if that happens."
Officials in the state's 67 counties said they would begin tallying their overseas ballots as soon as they received Friday morning mail delivery.
At the same time, officials in Broward and Palm Beach counties – heavily Democratic areas around Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach – were working their way by hand through hundreds of thousands of ballots. The Gore campaign is hoping the results of those recounts, as well as one the vice president is seeking in Miami-Dade County, will let him vault ahead of Bush.
Still, Gore aides conceded the recounts wouldn't be completed before Harris' deadline, adding to the prospect of more legal action in a case that has generated plenty.
The controversy's lengthening docket ran to a federal appeals court in Atlanta, where judges are considering the Bush campaign's bid to shut down the recounts.
The federal court also agreed to consider a related case filed by three Bush supporters from Brevard County. They claim their rights are being violated because their counties are not recanvassing votes by hand.
In Tallahassee, Florida Circuit Judge Terry Lewis said he would rule on a request, backed by the Democrats, to force Harris to use the recount totals.
In a controversy drenched in politics, no one escaped scrutiny.
Democrats noted that Harris is a Republican and staunch Bush supporter. Republicans pointed out that all seven members of the Florida Supreme Court owe their appointments to Democrats.
There were moments of emotion as well as political spin.
"We're going to have a trial," Republican activist William Scherer said as he burst in – subpoenas in hand – on elections officials recounting votes in Broward County.
"The nation is watching you. The state of Florida is watching you. And Broward County is watching you."
Republicans also released federal court affidavits from at least five witnesses who contend they observed possible ballot tampering in earlier hand recounts in Palm Beach County.
"It is no longer really counting, it is manipulation," Cheney said on Fox TV.
The pivotal event Thursday was a brief ruling by the Florida Supreme Court that said there was "no legal impediment" to continued recounts. The unanimous, one-paragraph order did not address whether Harris should be required to accept the results, leaving that issue for another day.
Within minutes, Judge Charles Burton, a member of the Palm Beach canvassing board, announced a countywide recount would begin.
It was controversy about the design of the county ballot, and complaints by some Gore supporters that they may have inadvertently voted for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan, that the vice president's campaign first cited more than a week ago when they began their recount campaign.
The Bush and Gore lawyers offered varying interpretations of the meaning of the court's ruling.
"I doubt if the Florida Supreme Court meant to have these counts go forward only to have them ignored," said David Boies, a member of Gore's legal team.
A few minutes later, former Secretary of State James Baker, a Republican, credited Democrats with a "superb example of the art of legal spin."
"A one-paragraph interim order of the Florida Supreme Court has just been portrayed to you ... as the biggest thing since night baseball," he said.
© Copyright 2000 The Associated Press
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