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Bush, Gore split decisions in Florida
Federal judge won’t block hand recount, but deadline stands
MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
TALLAHASSEE, Fla., Nov. 13 — Al Gore and George W. Bush each scored
victories Monday in their bitter post-election battle in Florida. Gore’s
lawyers turned back a GOP lawsuit in federal court that sought to halt hand
recounts of ballots while Bush triumphed when Florida’s secretary of state
refused to extend a 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline for completing all recounts.
Gore, whose campaign joined two Florida counties in a court challenge to the
deadline, made a brief public appearance to caution against a hasty
resolution, saying, “While time is important, it is even more important that
every vote is counted and counted accurately.”
“I WOULD NOT want to win the presidency by a few votes cast in
error or not counted or misinterpreted, and I don’t think Governor Bush wants
that either,” Gore said in a brief appearance outside the White House.
He also said there was more riding on the outcome than mere political
ambitions.
“While time is important, it is even more important that every vote is
counted and counted accurately,” Gore said.
His comments came as courts stepped into the dispute over the accuracy
of the vote-counting in four Florida counties.
FEDERAL LAWSUIT REJECTED
Earlier in the day in Miami, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks
declined to grant an injunction against the continued recounts sought by the
Republicans, saying the question belongs in state court.
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“While I share a desire for finality, I do not believe it is
served” by involving a federal court, he said after hearing arguments from
lawyers representing Bush and Gore.
Middlebrooks indicated he expected his decision to be appealed by the
Republicans, but the lead attorney for Bush, Theodore Olson, said no decision
had been made on an appeal.
At the hearing in U.S. District Court in Miami, the attorneys couched
their arguments to Middlebrooks, who was nominated to the bench by President
Bill Clinton, in much the same terms the two sides have used in public
statements since the Florida dispute flared in the hours after the polls
closed last week.
“The process, to sum it up, is selective, standardless, subjective,
unreliable and inherently biased,” said Olson, who served as assistant
attorney general in the Reagan administration.
HAND COUNTS ATTACKED
Olson said the hand count introduced elements of chance and partisan
bias to what ought to be a simple and uniform process of checking Florida’s
extraordinarily close election result.
Bruce Rogow, who presented arguments for the Democratic side, said the
hand count increased democracy and accuracy.
“Is it messy? Does it go on and on in some fashion? Yes, yes it does,
but that is democracy.”
Rogow and other Democratic lawyers disputed GOP claims that the hand
counts could go on for weeks, saying that if allowed to proceed, they will
almost certainly be complete by Friday.
The rejection of the GOP lawsuit came hours after Florida Secretary of
State Katherine Harris, a Republican, refused to extend the recount deadline
beyond the Tuesday 5 p.m. ET deadline set by state elections law.
The Gore campaign joined Volusia county, one of four counties affected
by Harris’ ruling, in a lawsuit filed in state court seeking an extension of
the deadline. Recounts were under way in Broward and Palm Beach counties, and
Dade Counties was to take up the issue on Tuesday.
“We want only enough time to complete the hand counting of the votes,
which should take only a few days,” Warren Christopher, Gore’s
representative in Florida, said at a media briefing. But he clarified that
the lawsuit seeks an injunction that would last until the hand counts are
concluded, even if that pushes certification of the vote back.
Bush’s campaign joined Harris in defense of her interpretation of the
state law.
DEADLINE REMAINS FIRM
At a meeting with Christopher and Gore campaign Chairman William Daley
early Monday, Harris and other officials of the state elections canvassing
board said the law was clear in stating that counties that fail to submit
their elections results — not counting absentee ballots — by the deadline
“shall be ignored.” In the case of counties engaged in hand recounts of
ballots, the totals from a machine recount completed last week would be used.
In a statement, Harris said “the electoral process is a balance
between the desire of each individual voter to have his or her intended vote
recorded and the right of the public to a clear, final result within a
reasonable time.”
She said state workers would be called in to help counties with the
manual recount but that they must abide by the Tuesday deadline. She said she
expected to certify the election results, including the absentee ballots due
on Friday, by Saturday afternoon.
ONE COUNTY LIKELY TO MEET DEADLINE
Even with the assistance, only one county — Volusia — was expected to
be able to complete its manual recount of its 184,018 ballots in time to meet
the deadline.
The hand recounts are critical to the Gore campaign if it is to
overturn Bush’s unofficial but razor-thin victory in Florida, where the
winner of the state’s 25 electoral votes stands to take the oath of office on
Jan. 20 as the nation’s 43rd president.
In announcing the results of a full statewide machine recount on
Friday, state elections officials said Bush was leading by 960 votes with 66
counties reporting. An unofficial Associated Press canvass of the
presidential vote in all of Florida’s 67 counties, updated Monday, showed
Bush had a 388-vote lead statewide. The county not included in the state’s
tally — Palm Beach — is under a court order not to certify its results
pending hearings on lawsuits alleging that a confusing ballot layout affected
the results.
Christopher, the Gore campaign’s representative in the Florida
election dispute, called Harris’ decision “arbitrary and unreasonable” and
suggested it was politically motivated, noting that she campaigned for Bush,
and is a political supporter of Bush’s brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
COURT CHALLENGE
Volusia County quickly went to state court Monday to sue for the right
to complete and certify its manual count regardless of Tuesday’s deadline,
and to bar the state from ignoring its results.
John Shubin, an MSNBC consultant and expert on Florida state elections
law, said that a court challenge would hinge on how a judge interpreted two
laws that contain conflicting language: The law requiring results to be
certified after seven days and another that gives the state elections board
some leeway in certifying the results.
"Courts are going to be asked to interpret these statutes,” he said.
“The question is can you read them together? … Can you reconcile these
statutes to say maybe there is some discretion?”
November 13, 2000
A Florida judge could hold the fate of the presidential election in his
hands. NBC’s Dan Abrams reports.
The progress in the manual recount in Volusia County demonstrated
the uncertainty hovering over the process. In unofficial results from the
recount provided to NBC News on Monday, reflecting the manual re-examination
of ballots in 112 of 172 precincts through late Sunday, Bush had garnered an
additional 237 votes while Gore has added 239 — a net gain of just two votes
for Gore.
The only major problem in Volusia was found in a precinct where the
hand count turned up 320 ballots not previously recorded. Election officials
said a ballot machine had inadvertently been reset on Election Day, erasing
the votes from the machine’s memory. Bush captured a majority of those votes,
the officials said.
In addition to Volusia County, manual recounts have been ordered or
are under consideration in four other Florida counties:
After completing a spot recount in Palm Beach County, election officials
announced plans Monday to begin a hand recount on Tuesday. Officials with the
county’s canvassing board said they expected the recount of the 425,000
ballots would last until Sunday night — five days beyond the deadline set by
Florida’s secretary of state. The spot hand recount of 1 percent of the
county’s ballots that was completed Saturday night found an error that — if
extrapolated — could translate to 1,900 votes in Gore’s favor, almost double
what he needs to overturn Bush’s unofficial victory in the state.
In Broward County, officials began a hand recount of three precincts Monday
afternoon. If significant problems are found, they also will consider a full
manual recount of all precincts. Broward officials said 6,686 ballots were
not counted because the computer did not recognize any selection in the
presidential race.
In Dade County, around Miami, election officials will meet Tuesday to
discuss a manual recount.
Democrats had submitted a petition requesting a hand recount in
Osceola County as well, but the request was withdrawn Monday, according to
county elections board spokeswoman Twis Huang.
Still outstanding are thousands of absentee ballots — no one is sure
just how many — mailed in by Florida residents. The Tuesday deadline to
report ballots cast on Election Night does not apply to the absentee ballots,
which must be received by Friday to be counted.
LOBBYING THE PUBLIC
Both campaigns laid the groundwork for the hearing by taking their
cases for and against the recounts to the public Sunday.
View images from the historic 2000 presidential election.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” former Secretary of State James
Baker, who was sent to Florida to oversee Bush’s interests in the dispute,
decried the hand recounts, saying, “There is huge potential for human error,
and there is huge potential for mischief.”
He called on Gore to abide by the results of a concluded machine
recount and mail-in absentee ballots still to be counted and said the
Republican candidate’s willingness to abide by the results demonstrated a
commitment to a fair and timely outcome.
Since the unofficial tally of recounted Florida votes showed Bush
with only a narrow lead, “there is some risk, I suppose, George Bush could
lose when those overseas ballots are counted,” Baker said. “But he is
willing to say, ‘Fine. There should be a cutoff here.’”
Christopher countered that the manual recounts Bush is seeking to
block can be completed in “a matter of days,” and said the vice president’s
campaign could not agree to limit its options at this point. He said Gore and
his advisers were taking the process step-by-step, with the current focus on
the hand recounts in certain counties, the counting of the overseas absentee
ballots and preparations for the Bush campaign’s possible challenge to
further recounts.
“When those things happen, at the end of that time, we’ll begin
looking at other options,” he said. “We’re collecting facts, reviewing those
options. I’m in no position now to give up that option. But it’s something
we’re studying,” he said.
DELAYING TACTICS DENIED
NBC’s Tim Russert asked Christopher if the Democrats’ strategy was
to delay matters until after the Electoral College meets Dec. 18, to ensure
that Florida’s electoral votes are not counted. As things now stand, such a
circumstance could result in Gore’s being elected president.
Christopher vehemently denied the suggestion. “Absolutely not.
Absolutely not,” he said.
"We’re not talking about a long delay here. Frankly, I think it’s a
matter of days — not weeks, not months — but days before we reach a result.
We want to reach a full and fair result, but we want to do it in an
expeditious way.”
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