-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Florida High Court Hands Gore Much-Needed Victory Friday, December 8, 2000 By John P. Martin A divided Florida Supreme Court again rescued Al Gore's presidential bid on Friday, overturning George W. Bush's certified victory and ordering an immediate recount of thousands of disputed ballots. Vincent Laforet/New York Times Friday: Spokesman Craig Waters reads a statement from the Florida Supreme Court ordering a statewide manual recount of all undervotes. The justices voted 4-3 to reverse a lower court decision against Gore and give the vice president 383 new votes that were counted but not certified in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties. It also directed a state court to oversee recounts of what could be tens of thousands of ballots in any county where "undervotes" occurred. Undervotes are those ballots for which no vote for president was identified. The decision, announced in Tallahassee at 4:01 p.m. EST, ensures that the month-long legal odyssey in Florida will continue perilously close to the state's Tuesday deadline for selecting presidential electors. It also potentially reduces Bush's lead in the race to 154 votes out of nearly six million cast more than a month ago. Circuit Judge N. Sanders Sauls, who had earlier refused to order a recount, recused himself from further proceedings in the case. The proceedings were then quickly reassigned to Leon Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis, who ordered during a rare Friday evening hearing an 8 a.m. EST Saturday start for the recounting of Miami-Dade's 9,000 disputed ballots, and also a 2 p.m. EST Sunday deadline for the recounting of disputed ballots in all other counties. The judge didn't set any standard for manually counting ballots, leaving it up to county canvassing boards. Gore wants counted ballots with mere indentations, which weren't detected by machine count. The high court majority said that determining the will of the people has long been the "guiding principle" of Florida's election law and its legislature. The prevailing justices contended that a difference of a few hundred votes was a margin enough to cast doubt on the results, and they faulted Sauls for refusing to review nearly 14,000 disputed votes, as Gore asked. "The trial court has presented the plaintiffs with the ultimate Catch-22, acceptance of the only evidence that will resolve the issue but a refusal to examine such evidence," said the 40-page opinion, signed by Justices Barbara J. Pariente, Peggy A. Quince, Harry Lee Anstead and R. Fred Lewis. The evidence cited were the ballots that Sauls ordered moved to Tallahassee from Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties. In a sometimes stinging dissent, Chief Justice Charles T. Wells argued that the court lacked the legal authority to order the recount and warned his colleagues that, by prolonging the dispute, they could be inviting a Constitutional crisis. Justices Major B. Harding, whose dissent was joined by Justice Leander J. Shaw, said simply that Gore had failed to prove his case. He also noted the ticking clock, quoting Vince Lombardi: "We didn't lose the game. We just ran out of time." The ruling came nearly two hours after two state judges denied bids by Democrats to disqualify thousands of absentee ballots in Seminole and Martin Counties — setbacks that, coupled with a loss in the state Supreme Court, could have all but ended Gore's chances to overtake his Republican rival. At the same time, the GOP-controlled Florida Legislature said it would reconvene a special session on Monday to appoint a new slate of presidential electors for Bush if the legal wrangling continues past Tuesday. Late Friday, Bush authorized his lawyers to appeal to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy to temporarily set aside the state court ruling and filed an official appeal of the decision with the high court. Bush attorneys also filed an emergency petition with the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta asking that the recounts be stopped — before they could begin — until the nation's highest court could settle the issue. "This is what happens when, for the first time in a modern history, a candidate resorts to lawsuits to try to overturn the outcome of an election for president," said James A. Baker III, overseeing Bush's effort in Florida. "It is very sad." Gore was said by friends to be "overjoyed" and "thrilled" but offered no public statements. His chief legal adviser, Ron Klain, got the news in a phone call from a court clerk minutes before the court spokesman announced it to the media. Klain turned to his colleagues in Tallahassee and said "We won!" Cheers erupted. Gore's campaign chairman, William Daley, called the ruling "a victory for fairness and accuracy and our democracy itself." Gore's attorneys had urged the court to review nearly 14,000 punch-card ballots from Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties that they contended were legitimate votes but didn't register when scanned by voting machines. The majority agreed that Miami-Dade deserved review, but sided with Sauls and denied the Democrat's request to review 3,300 contested ballots in Palm Beach County and disqualify 51 Nassau County votes that Gore contended were certified too late. It was not immediately clear how quickly the recount would begin and which ballots were subject to review. Elections officials were meeting Friday night to devise the schedule. The court did not specify which counties should be reviewed or the recount standard election officials must use in recounting the ballots. Instead it pointed to the legislative language that sparked the controversy and made dimpled, pregnant and hanging "chads" unforgettable entries in America's political lexicon. A vote, it ruled, "shall be counted where there is a clear indication of the intent of the voter." The same seven justices, each appointed by Democratic governors, were the ones who first extended the dispute, when they ruled on Nov. 21 that Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Broward counties could conduct recounts and file amended returns by Nov. 26. Broward finished the task, Miami-Dade abandoned it, and Palm Beach reviewed its last ballot hours after the deadline to finish the count had passed. That ruling was unanimous. But in this one, the majority said Sauls erred when he said the court had no authority to review the contested ballots without proof that local elections officials had abused their discretion, and it said Gore's challenge of a specific number of disputed votes was logical. "Counting uncontested votes in a contest would be irrelevant" in determining an accurate result, the justices wrote. Chief Justice Wells repeatedly pressed the attorneys during oral arguments to address whether the court had the authority to extend the recounts on Nov. 21 or if its role was trumped by Florida law and federal election law. Wells concluded it overstepped its bounds. "I believe that the majority's decision cannot withstand the scrutiny which will certainly immediately follow under the U.S. Constitution," he wrote. Harding added that there was no clear remedy for the dispute, and said that Gore failed to prove that reviewing the votes would change the statewide results. "That failure of proof controls the outcome here," he wrote. The news prompted celebration from Democrats and groans from Republicans. In Washington, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., was buoyant. "Two strikes, two outs in the bottom of the ninth, and Gore gets a hit," he said. But Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Okla., saw it differently. "This is starting to resemble the movie Groundhog Day," Watts said. "Every morning America wakes up to the Vice President calling for recounts and every night when we go to bed the Vice President is still the loser, only to wake up a few hours later to the same mind-numbing saga." Fox News correspondents Jim Angle, Rita Cosby, Carl Cameron and the Associated Press contributed to this report. *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. 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