Wednesday November 15 7:03 PM ET
Gore Offers Full Recount in Florida
By JESSE HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites) floated two possible solutions to Florida's contested election on Wednesday night, suggesting a hand recount of all 6 million ballots cast in Florida's 67 counties if Republicans won't accept results of recounts under way in three counties selected by Democrats.
With running mate Joseph Lieberman (news - web sites) at his side, Gore also suggested that he and Texas Gov. George W. Bush (news - web sites) meet in person ``not to negotiate but to improve the tone of our dialogue in America.''
With lawsuits pending in state and federal court and no swift end in sight to the election, Gore said he was offering a way to break the deadlock, leaving it up to the Republicans to respond.
Gore said his preference was to complete hand recounts in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties, adding those votes to certified results from 64 other counties and an unknown number of overseas absentee ballots to be counted at week's end.
If the Republicans accepted that, he said he was prepared to accept the results without legal challenges.
Going further, he said he would be prepared to ``include in this recount all the counties in the entire state of Florida'' in the hand recount - a process that would involve reviewing 6 million votes. He said that could be done in seven days.
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Bush Rejects Gore Recount Proposal
By EUN-KYUNG Kim
.c The Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas (Nov. 15) - Texas Gov. George W. Bush rejected Al Gore's proposal for a statewide manual recount in Florida, calling the procedure underway in Democratic-leaning countries ''neither fair or accurate. It would be arbitrary and chaotic,'' he said Wednesday night.
Following Gore in front of a nationally televised audience, Bush accepted Gore's offer to meet together after Florida's contentious election outcome is resolved - but did not mention the vice president's suggestion that they meet sooner.
''Not for Vice President Gore or me, but for America this process must have a point of conclusion. America and the world must know who will be the next president,'' Bush said from the living room of the governor's mansion, a setting that resembled a formal White House scene.
AP-NY-11-15-00 2229EST
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Fla. Official Denies Hand Recounts
BY ANNE GEARAN
.c The Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris rejected requests from Democratic-leaning counties Wednesday night to include the result of hand recounts in presidential vote totals. George W. Bush opposes the ballot reviews and Al Gore favors them in their battle for the White House.
The state's chief elections officer, sharply criticized by Democrats in recent days as a partisan Republican, declared it was ``my duty under Florida law'' to reject requests that four counties submitted earlier in the day.
She noted her decision was subject to an appeal in the courts - and it seemed likely there would be one.
Gore spokesman Mark Fabiani, minutes after her announcement, said the Democrat will challenge Harris' decision in the state courts. ``It's an outrageous decision. It's a rash decision and it won't stand,'' he said.
Bush leads Gore by 300 votes in the state whose 25 electoral votes will settle the presidential election, according to totals certified by Harris on Tuesday night. They are subject to change only from an unknown number of absentee ballots to be counted by midnight Friday, she said.
Harris stepped to the microphones to make her announcement seven hours after the 2 p.m. deadline she had set for counties to petition for the right to update their returns.
She said four counties had done so - Democratic-leaning Broward, Palm and Miami-Dade and GOP stronghold Collier - and she had reviewed their paperwork.
``The reasons given in the requests are insufficient to warrant waiver of the unambiguous filing deadline imposed by the Florida Legislature,'' she said, without further elaboration.
The announcement capped a tumultuous day in which the state supreme court refused to stop hand recounts planned or underway in the three heavily Democratic counties. But a federal appeals court in Atlanta agreed to consider the Bush campaign's attempt to halt the new canvasses.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' unusually rapid decision Wednesday to accept the case could launch the controversy firmly on its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Earlier in the day, Harris led the parade to the Florida Supreme Court with an early-morning lawsuit asking the justices to block the hand recounts at least temporarily, and to consolidate election-related lawsuits. The court turned her down without a hearing.
The Bush campaign has fought to stop the recounts on several fronts.
Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III argued on Wednesday that the ``process is unfair, gives rise to human error, gives rise to the potential for great mischief.''
Baker lamented the proliferation of lawsuits, saying the situation has ``run amok now.''
Warren Christopher, the former secretary of state chosen to lead Gore's recount, defended the legal strategy. ``We simply must, in order to protect the rights of the vice president in this matter, enable us to take steps that seem warranted,'' Christopher said.
In rejecting Harris' suit, the justices, all chosen by Democratic governors, did not address the many other election-related legal challenges making their way through Florida courts.
``Our legal team is reviewing it, but we are certainly pleased the court has ordered that the counts should proceed,'' said Doug Hattaway, a spokesman for Democrat Al Gore.
The Bush camp disputed that interpretation and noted that the state high court's one-paragraph rejection slip did not address the substance of Harris' request. The court left open the option that Harris could sue in a lower state court, or make her arguments another way.
The state high court agreed to review complaints from two South Florida counties - Broward and Palm Beach - that say they are confused about how to proceed with recounts. Harris and state Democratic Attorney General Bob Butterworth have given the counties conflicting guidance. The counties are suing both.
The status of recounts in four counties hand-picked by Democrats shifted quickly:
Officials in Palm Beach, where concerns about the ballot design prompted the Florida dispute, left Wednesday without starting their manual recount. They plan to meet Thursday afternoon to decide how to begin.
Election officials in Broward County reversed course and authorized a hand recount they previously had rejected. The county canvassing board approved the recount 2-1, with the pivotal vote cast by chairman Robert W. Lee, a Democrat and county judge who switched his vote. Republicans lost a court battle to block the recount.
Volusia has already completed its recount and reported it to the state;
Miami-Dade, Florida's largest, has declined a countywide hand recount for the time being. All are heavily Democratic areas where Gore supporters hope to find additional votes for the vice president.
In Gadsden County, west of Tallahassee, a new dispute arose after county election officials announced a recheck of more than 2,000 ballots that had been rejected by voting machines gave Gore a net gain of 153. The gain helped whittle Bush's statewide lead to 300 in new figures announced Tuesday.
Republicans complained that those disputed ballots should not have been counted; Democrats on Wednesday withdrew a request to review the disputed ballots.
The legality of the recounts is being challenged on several fronts by Republicans, while Democrats countered that Florida law allows them.
``Under Florida law, any candidate has a right to get a manual recount,'' Gore lawyer David Boies said. ``What we're saying is: Don't change the rules in the middle of the game, don't shut out the manual recount here when that has been a traditional part of Florida law.''
In Atlanta, the federal appeals court said that all 12 of its judges would hear Bush's challenge to the hand recounts in selected Democratic-leaning counties. Bush lost a similar bid in federal court in Miami earlier this week.
AP-NY-11-15-00 2156EST
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THURSDAY NOVEMBER 16 2000
Turn of a card may decide all
BY BEN MACINTYRE
THE presidential contest in New Mexico, and conceivably even the outcome of the whole election, could be settled in Wild West fashion: by a game of poker played between Al Gore and George W. Bush.
Fewer than 400 votes separate the two men in New Mexico, with ballots still being counted. Under state law, if the race ends in a tie, the outcome should be settled by drawing lots but in practice the traditional method has been to play a hand of five-card stud.
If Mr Bush wins Florida, but Mr Gore successfully challenges his narrow victory in New Hampshire, then New Mexico could hold the key to the White House.
After the chaos of “pregnant chads”, lawsuits and manual recounts, there might be poetic justice in an election settled by the luck of the draw, in a game of bluff and counter-bluff.
Undoubtedly, Mr Gore has the better poker face. Some say this is his only face. But Mr Bush’s misspent youth must have acquainted him with the inside of a card deck.
John Dendahl, New Mexico’s Republican Party chairman, pointed out that there would be little chance to demonstrate card-playing skill, or cheat, with only a single round to decide the issue. “That’s what’s been done in the past. Not even a whole game. Just one hand, and that takes dumb luck,” he said.
The last election to be settled at the card table was in December last year, when Jim Blanq, a Republican, and Lena Milligan, a Democrat, tied at 798 votes for the post of magistrate.
A hand of poker in the local courthouse gave the prize to Mr Blanq. In 1988 James Farrington became Mayor of Estancia on the back of an ace-high flush.
Copyright 2000 Times Newspapers Ltd
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Sources: Some Dems Impatient
Wednesday, November 15, 2000
By Rita Cosby
WASHINGTON — With no clear end to Florida's election chaos in sight, tensions are rising, even within Al Gore's camp.
Sources close to the vice president told FOX News that his longtime adviser Peter Knight has been told by several key donors that they don't have open wallets with unlimited cash, and that they want the election turmoil to end in the next few days.
Knight has held two conference calls with about 75 supporters and donors to raise $3 million to pay for lawyers to take their case in Florida to the courts. As the race drags on, however, that cost could rise. Sources said that in the last call, some donors told Knight they were running out of patience.
Sources close to Gore also told FOX News that this week members of Gore's campaign staff called Sens. John Breaux, D-La, and Robert Torricelli, D-NJ, to express their anger over the senators' public comments that the Florida situation should not drag out much longer because it could damage the legitimacy of the presidency.
"The pressure on someone is going to be enormous to accept whatever result Florida has reached, and that falls equally on both parties," Torricelli told FOX News Sunday this week.
And Gore is getting some pressure from within his own family. Close friends of the vice president told FOX News that Gore's oldest daughter Karenna, one of his key advisers, has been telling her father to show restraint for the good of the country, and that whatever the outcome, he must accept the decision of the courts.
In addition, the Gore campaign is relieved that future New York Senator Hillary Clinton is out of the country right now attending memorial services in Israel for the wife of late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Sources in the campaign said they felt Clinton was a polarizing figure who riled up Republicans and the public last week when she said she would introduce legislation in the Senate to abolish the electoral college.
FOXNews.com's Sharon Kehnemui contributed to this report
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Florida Court Rejects End to Recounts
Earlier in the day, the Democrat-appointed Florida Supreme Court denied the request of Secretary of State Katherine Harris to stop the recounts in the Democrat-dominated counties.
The justices also denied the top state election official's request to move all lawsuits regarding the election to a state court in Tallahassee.
Harris' action was supported by the Bush campaign.
Minutes after that decision, a state court in Broward County rejected a lawsuit aimed at stopping the recount there.
Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris asked the state Supreme Court on Wednesday to centralize all legal aspects of the presidential election in Leon County Circuit Court in Tallahassee. She also asked for an order suspending manual hand counts.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher said Democrats were making their own request of the Supreme Court, including a determination on whether hand counts are appropriate under the state's laws.
"We'll be responding today to Mrs. Harris' petition today with our own petition," Christopher said.
"Instead of sending the matter to a trial court, we'll be asking the Supreme Court of Florida itself to resolve critical questions."
Harris had said that counties still involved in manual vote recounts must explain in writing by 2 p.m. EST why they planned to continue hand recounts after the 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline. Palm Beach and Broward Counties both sent her explanations citing the uncertainty of the ballots in Palm Beach County, and the large turnout, as reasons for the delays.
Miami-Dade County has decided against hand counts, but that could change.
Closure?
Harris said that unless she determines the statements justify the recounts, the State Elections Canvassing Commission will certify the current results as final. She said they would be changed only by the count Saturday of overseas absentee ballots that must have been postmarked by Election Day and received by Friday.
In another development, Circuit Court Judge Jorge Labarga in West Palm Beach, Fla., ruled Wednesday that the County Canvass Board has the authority to determine the method it deems necessary to determine the intent of voters in a manual recount of ballots.
The ruling cleared the way for a full manual recount of the hundreds of thousands of ballots.
Labarga also scheduled a hearing for Friday to determine whether a revote in Palm Beach County would be legal. The hearing would be part of a lawsuit filed by Democrat voters who claimed the county's Democrat-approved butterfly ballots were so confusing they voted for the wrong candidate.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Wednesday that all 12 members will consider a Republican appeal of two Florida election cases in which judges have refused to issue injunctions against a hand count. Lawyers on both sides were told to have their briefs in by 7 a.m. Thursday.
Copyright 2000 by United Press International. All rights reserved.
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Florida Supreme Court Hostile Territory for GOP
NewsMax.com
Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2000
In taking their cases against Gov. Jeb Bush’s administration to the Florida Supreme Court, four Democrat-dominated counties have dragged the GOP into a fight on what has been hostile territory for Republicans.
Past relations between Jeb Bush’s administration and the state’s highest court have been less cordial than the relations between the feuding Hatfields and McCoys.
For the past year and a half, Bush and the GOP-controlled legislature have been battling the Democrat-dominated State Supreme Court.
Now the Bush forces – Jeb’s and George’s – face a new battle over ballots and the rights of four counties to recount them. At the very least they desperately need a neutral forum where they can plead their case.
One of the cases involves two Florida counties – Volusia and Broward – that are asking the court to review and overturn a Tallahassee judge's order allowing Secretary of State Katherine Harris to enforce a 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline for counties to report their vote counts.
In the second matter, Palm Beach and Volusia officials want the court to clarify conflicting legal opinions issued by Clay Roberts, the Republican director of the state division of elections, who told Palm Beach County that it did not have any legal right to conduct hand recounts, and Democrat state Attorney General Bob Butterworth, who says that the counties have a right to do so.
Moreover, the court is expected to have to deal with a series of lawsuits filed in lower courts that deal with the so-called butterfly ballot, used in Palm Beach County, that a Democrat elections supervisor had approved and that allegedly confused some voters.
Seven Democrats in Robes
The history of hostility between Gov. Jeb Bush and the seven state Supreme Court justices, appointed by previous Democrat governors, has Republicans wringing their hands over what kind of greeting they’ll get.
In June, for example, Jeb Bush charged that the court hurt crime victims by contributing to "unnecessary delay and legal gamesmanship" in handling death penalty cases. Two months ago, Bush reacted to a court ruling by charging that the court did not respect the voters’ will.
Feelings ran so high on both sides that last spring GOP state legislators attempted to change the makeup of the court by naming two new members and stripping the court of some its powers. They failed, but the rancor persists.
"Judges are theoretically above being influenced by emotions, but the odds are that some can have twangs of anger like the rest of us," GOP state committeeman Tom Slade told the Washington Post.
Slade said he was hopeful that the justices would let bygones be bygones.
"Generally speaking, I think the justices are too distinguished a group of people to let a personal vendetta influence their decision, but if someone in the Republican Party has made them mad, I suspect they wish at this time that they hadn't."
Others also expressed hope that the court will stick to legal reasoning. Several former state Supreme Court justices and other legal analysts in Florida told the Post that the court would not be influenced by politics.
"I don't think that the fact that Bush and the Republican legislature have been constantly bashing the Supreme Court is going to play any role in their decision making," said former justice Gerald Kogan, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Bob Martinez.
And former justice Ben Overton said that the court "will just have to fasten their seat belt, and I know they will rule based on the law."
Recent Rulings Give Pause
Unfortunately, the law as interpreted by the court in recent rulings gives scant reason to believe they’ll rule in the GOP’s favor now. The court’s recent case law on election disputes indicates they may throw out Harris’ deadline.
According to the Post, in 1998 four justices joined in the court’s unanimous opinion in Beckstrom vs. Volusia County, which involved a dispute over the counting of absentee ballots in a nonpartisan sheriff’s election between two Republican candidates.
In that case the justices were bent on making sure that all voters are heard, and implied that an election can be valid even if election officials were merely in "substantial compliance" with voting laws instead of being in "strict compliance."
"The real parties in interest here, not in the legal sense but in realistic terms, are the voters," the court ruled.
"By refusing to recognize an otherwise valid exercise of the right of a citizen to vote for the sake of a sacred, unyielding adherence to statutory scripture, we would in effect nullify" the right to vote.
Should the court rule that manual recounts will give a clearer picture of the voters' true intentions in the disputed counties, and if it sees Harris' enforcement of the deadline as a form of "unyielding adherence to statutory scripture" that would prevent the manual recounts, then it might well decide against her, legal analysts told the Post.
"I think the Supreme Court will say count all of them and don't worry about a few being late," said Donald W. Weidner, a Jacksonville attorney and self-described Bush supporter who argued the 1998 case on behalf of defeated sheriff candidate Gus Beckstrom.
Yet in confronting the cases arising out of the election, the justices have to know they could pay a price if their ruling is seen as partisan politics and not solid jurisprudence. As the Post reported, the court has already been punished for some of its more controversial rulings this year.
After the justices struck down Gov. Jeb Bush's plan to speed up executions by limiting death penalty appeals this year, Bush and other Republican lawmakers took them on in the court of public opinion. Then the legislature refused the state Supreme Court's budget request to fund 43 new lower-court judges.
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Vote Recount Judge a Gore Donor
CNSNews.com
Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2000
The head of a Washington legal group says the federal judge who ruled against a request to suspend the hand counting of ballots in Democrat-dominated Florida counties should have recused himself from the case because of a lengthy history of campaign contributions to Democrats, including Bill Clinton and Al Gore.
National Legal and Policy Center President Peter Flaherty said a compilation of Federal Election Commission records by the NLPC shows that U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks has given more than $19,000 to an array of Democrat candidates for federal office, including $1,000 to Clinton's 1996 re-election effort.
"Judges must adhere to high standards of ethics and integrity, even more so when the judge is required to effectively pick the next president of the United States," said Flaherty.
"This judge failed to meet these standards."
According to the FEC data collected by Flaherty's group and verified by a crosscheck of contribution records, Middlebrooks donated $19,480 to Democrat candidates and committees between 1979 and 1996.
The FEC data also show Middlebrooks made a $250 contribution to the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 1996, which Flaherty noted "occurred the year before the Republican-controlled Senate confirmed his appointment by Bill Clinton to the federal bench in 1997."
Middlebrooks was the judge who rejected Republican arguments Monday that the hand counting of ballots in four Republican-minority Florida counties was a violation of the Constitution because it did not treat all Florida counties and their voters equally.
The hand counts in question amounted to the third tally of ballots in those areas, where Vice President Al Gore won decisive victories in the Nov. 7 election.
The Bush campaign is reportedly planning an appeal of Middlebrooks' Monday decision.
CNSNews.com
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Judge Allows Bungled Ballots
CNSNews.com
Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2000
A Florida judge ruled Wednesday that Palm Beach County elections officials may count voter-bungled ballots with "partial punctures." The ruling is considered a big victory for Democrats.
The "dimpled" or "pregnant" chads – those not punched through – are likely to add to Al Gore's vote total in this heavily Democrat county.
The Palm Beach Canvassing Board has delayed a full manual recount until the Florida Supreme Court takes up the question of partially punched ballots.
Gore adviser Warren Christopher, a former U.S. secretary of state, said he planned to petition to the state's highest court to answer that "critical question" and others.
Copyright CNSNews.com
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Gore's Deal Is a Trojan Horse
Dan Frisa
Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2000
Snake oil, anyone?
That’s about all this so-called sincere deal is worth, put forth by Junior Gore in an attempt to repair his sagging public image, so badly damaged from the self-inflicted wounds his desperation play for votes has brought about.
He said there were two plans to which he would agree: 1) that the Democrat counties would be able to hand count their ballots and that the absentee ballots would also be counted, then he would drop all of his lawsuits; and 2) that all counties in Florida would be hand-counted and the absentee ballots would also be counted, then he would drop all of his lawsuits.
These plans amount to nothing more than a Trojan Horse; in short, it’s a trap.
It's also a case of heads I win, tails you lose.
Both of these plans achieve the only objective Junior cares about: winning at any cost, even if it means subverting Florida law.
The fact is that the remaining counties in Florida have automated voting. Therefore, recounts in those areas, even the Republican strongholds, would yield few additional votes for Bush.
So isn’t it big of Junior Gore to make this offer?
He wins either way!
If just the Democrat counties are hand-counted, he stands to gain thousands of votes. Votes that should never even be reviewed in the first instance, primarily because they have already been recounted by machine, but also because there are no objective standards with which to judge the various "chad" permutations.
If all of the counties are hand-counted, Gore stands to gain the same thousands of votes from the Democrat counties and Bush might be lucky to gain dozens, at best, from the automated Republican counties, which have very little margin of error.
Here’s the bottom line:
The Florida law requiring certification of the vote one week after Election Day has an important purpose: to prevent undue handling and tampering with the results. Period. And it is this law that the secretary of state, Katherine Harris, has rightly upheld, as did a Florida judge in a ruling issued yesterday.
Team Gore lost the election and they don’t like it, and so far they’ve been allowed to subvert the process with lies, deceit, and chicanery. Oh yes, and with frivolous lawsuits.
Governor Bush should look this Trojan Horse in the mouth and say thanks, but no thanks: "I choose the rule of law, and that cannot be ‘bargained’ away to suit someone’s personal agenda. And yes, I’d be happy to meet with you, Mr. Vice President, after the election is concluded."
That would be saying a great deal and it’s something that’s been needed to be said for far too long.
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California Absentees Could Determine Popular Vote
Stephan Archer
Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2000
While Florida's absentee ballots may determine the winner in the electoral count, similar ballots in states such as California may still determine the final winner of the popular vote in this year's presidential election.
According to Shad Balch, spokesman for California Secretary of State Bill Jones, 3.2 million requests for absentee ballots were made in the state before the Nov. 7 election, and historically, 85 percent of those requests get turned in. This would mean in just the Golden State alone, more than 2.7 million people voted for president by absentee ballot.
Currently, Vice President Al Gore leads Texas Gov. George W. Bush in California by more than 12 percent. Looking at the state's popular vote, Gore leads with 5,443,722 votes to Bush's 4,223,342 votes. The difference between the two candidates is a little over 1.2 million votes.
On the national scale, however, Gore's lead over Bush in the popular vote dwindles to 222,880 votes out of nearly 100 million votes recorded. Gore leads Bush in the electoral count 255-246 so far.
Balch said: "The counties have told us that as of right now, they have yet to count a total of 1,021,000 absentee votes. You cannot speculate who those will go for."
Although predicting the final outcome of the absentee ballots in the state is difficult, Mark DiCamillo at the Public Policy Institute of California ventured a guess that they would reflect the general voting trend throughout the state.
The Public Policy Institute of California has been measuring the absentee votes in California for Voter News Service for the past 10 years.
"The late absentees are more likely to be reflective of the total electorate, not so much the organized campaign-motivated vote, which is what I would characterize the early absentees. They're different groups," DiCamillo said.
DiCamillo further explained that approximately 60 percent of the absentee votes had already been included in the total popular vote for California. In fact, the "first wave" of absentee ballots were counted in advance of the election and were the first to be reported on election night after the polls closed throughout the state at 8 p.m. PST.
Regarding the conventional wisdom that absentee voters tend to lean toward the conservative candidate, DiCamillo said there was no question that at least the initial absentee ballots did so for Bush. He credits the California Republican Party's massive drive to get out the vote early by encouraging the conservative base to vote absentee.
"The early absentees were for Bush. No question about it," said DiCamillo. "But the late absentees, generally speaking, are more reflective of just the growing phenomenon in California of the preference to vote by mail, and we' re talking about over 2.5 million absentee voters out of close to 11 million voters."
DiCamillo added that because of the Republican effort to get out the vote early, there was a more Republican lean in the absentee ballot total. He concluded, though, that the remaining absentee ballots will lean toward Gore.
According to Balch, some of the smaller counties in the state could have their results certified as early as Friday, but the deadline for all counties in the state is Dec. 5.
With the popular vote of the nation so close, it could still be another couple of weeks before either candidate or the country knows who got the most votes.
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