Florida counties weigh recounts, court orders
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Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris announces the official recount results (November 14)
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Gore Campaign Chairman William Daley responds to Florida recount numbers (November 14)
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Bush Campaign Committee Director Karen Hughes responds to the Florida recount numbers (November 14)
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Terre Cass of the court administrator's office reads Florida judge's ruling to uphold 5 p.m. deadline for vote certification (Nov. 14)
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TALLAHASSEE, Florida (CNN) -- Florida's secretary of state asked the state's top court Wednesday to delay any hand counting of ballots and consolidate lawsuits in the chaotic vote count that has left the presidential election hanging in the balance for more than a week.
Katherine Harris, a Republican, filed the petition with the~
state Supreme Court as officials in heavily Democratic Palm Beach~
County gathered to begin a recount that she has opposed. She earlier gave all counties until 2 p.m. EST Wednesday to justify to her why they should be allowed to conduct further counting past a 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline.
Harris, who is Florida's top election official, is a Republican and co-chairwoman of Bush's Florida campaign.
Election officials in Palm Beach County on Wednesday delayed the start of a recount of that county's 431,000 ballots. The recount was supposed to begin in Palm Beach County at 7 a.m. but the canvassing board voted to delay the start until a state court judge rules on a suit seeking to force the county to count so-called "dimpled" ballots. Dimpled ballots are those with punch holes not completely punched through.
Meanwhile, local authorities weighed the import of pending state and federal court suits on the results of the presidential contest in Florida.
With Tuesday's ruling from a state judge in Tallahassee urging Harris to use her discretion to decide whether to accept results submitted after Tuesday night, Palm Beach County officials planned to start a hand recount early Wednesday morning. Officials estimated a full manual count of the more than 431,000 ballots would take six days to complete.
Florida's 25 electoral votes can swing the White House to either Vice President Al Gore or Texas Gov. George W. Bush. According to results certified by all 67 Florida counties Tuesday, Gore, the Democratic nominee, trails his Republican rival by only 300 votes. Florida officials have until Friday night to accept absentee ballots, and Republicans expect those votes to favor Bush.
With the race so close, Gore's campaign sought manual recounts in four heavily Democratic counties to determine whether ballots discarded by vote-counting machines should have been included in the final count. The Bush camp is fighting those moves, leading to a thicket of court rulings and legal opinions that county election officials have to wade through.
Bush campaign to appeal federal judge's ruling
Meanwhile, the Bush campaign moved Tuesday to stop any further manual recounts in Florida, filing notice that it would appeal a Miami federal judge's refusal to block the recounts to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
Palm Beach County's canvassing board voted to move forward with a hand count Tuesday, but authorized the county attorney to go to state court to get a judge to resolve the matter.
"I lost an election by one vote in a city commission election. I know how important every vote is," said Carol Roberts, a member of the Palm Beach County canvassing board. "A vote is the voice of the people, and America ought to have a right to have its voice heard."
In Fort Lauderdale, Broward County canvassing officials
adjourned until 5 p.m. on Friday to ask the Florida
Supreme Court to rule on conflicting interpretations of
state election law. Local Democrats have urged the county
to resume its manual recount, and the canvassing board
voted to add four more votes to Gore on Tuesday -- votes
that turned up during a hand count of three precincts on Monday.
Miami-Dade rejects full hand recount
It's no longer an issue for two of the four counties, however: In Miami, the canvassing board voted against a full manual recount late Tuesday after a hand count of three precincts requested by Democrats found six new votes for Gore. Miami-Dade County Election Supervisor David Leahy said a further hand recount was likely to produce only proportional changes for each candidate and probably would not change the outcome.
And Volusia County completed a manual recount Tuesday, a process that yielded an additional 98 votes for Gore among roughly 184,000 ballots cast. The recount was finished in time to submit the results to Harris on Tuesday.
"I am satisfied with the result we have come up with, but I am deeply dissatisfied with the way that we had to come up with it today," said Judge Michael McDermott, the Volusia County canvassing board chairman. "Everything prior went very very well, but today was a day I never want to go through again."
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