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Ruling Expected Shortly in Seminole and Martin Counties

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR: In this most unpredictable of presidential elections, a prediction: Judgment Day for Al Gore, perhaps. Three court decisions are pending today. Two expected this hour, perhaps in a matter of minutes.

At least one of the three must be favorable to the vice president if he is to keep his quest for the White House alive. The most important decision outstanding is from Florida's Supreme Court. It could decide whether thousands of South Florida ballots will be recounted by hand. Gore requested the recounts when he contested the certified election results.

We are expecting two rulings this hour from circuit judges in Tallahassee. Al Gore is not officially involved in either case, but he could be the big winner.

This judge, Nikki Clark, will decide whether to disqualify potentially thousands of absentee ballots in Seminole County. And Judge Terry Lewis will make a similar determination for disputed absentee ballots from Martin County. In both cases, Republican operatives filled in missing information on absentee ballot requests, and Democrats say that was illegal.

There's a quick overview of all the legal action in Florida today.

As we wait for the rulings on those two absentee ballot lawsuits, let's check in with CNN's Martin Savidge, who's keeping an eye on things in Florida's capital city of Tallahassee.

Martin, good afternoon.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good afternoon to you, Stephen.

This is judgment hour, we believe, at least in the two cases, Seminole County and Martin County here and 25,000 absentee ballots that may be at stake. Certainly, a pivotal point in what has been a 31-day expedition after the election trying to determine the next president of the United States. And there is a definite air of anticipation right now, as we await these two verdicts to come in.

We believe right now that actually the rulings are being transmitted somehow to the attorneys involved. They will get it first, and then it will be generally released to the rest of the world, as they have said.

CNN's Mark Potter is now standing by over at the Leon County Courthouse where this is transpiring, and he joins us with the pictures verbally from there -- Mark.

MARK POTTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Martin.

Well after a couple of weeks of pretrial activity and two very long days in court, we are now in a few minutes expecting the ruling from the judges in the Seminole and Martin County absentee ballot cases. And the overwhelming question is 25,000 absentee ballots, should they be thrown out because of alleged irregularities in the handling of absentee ballot applications?

Now we are expecting this announcement to be read at about 2:15 Eastern time, about 12 minutes or so from now. And we had been expecting that earlier. We were told originally it would be about 12:30, but then we were told that one of the judges, Nikki Ann Clark, from the Seminole case, needed a little more time to polish up her ruling. So now we've had this delay, but we're not very far away from hearing the ruling.

As was mentioned earlier, the lawyers are getting their first crack at it. They're being told the details of this ruling. This is a courtesy that was extended to them by the judges and the courthouse personnel.

After they are finished, the court administrator, Terre Cass, and the spokesman for the court, Doug Smith (ph), will come down to microphones that have been set up in the podium, in the rotunda, of the courthouse, the building behind me. And they will read the essence of both rulings. They are going to be issued at the same time. And then when they are done, they will hand out the full text of the ruling for us to study.

Now the lawyers going in said that they were nervous. They're practiced lawyers, they're pros. They've been doing this for years, decades in many cases, but this is a big ruling, and they expressed that they are nervous and they're not quite sure which way this is going to go.

One of the plaintiffs, Harry Jacobs, from the Seminole case, who is himself an attorney, he's also a Democrat, said that he is cautiously optimistic about his chances of winning in this case. But he also pointed out, Martin, that he has already drafted his notice of appeal just in case he loses. So he is covering his bases. We will have to wait and see what happens. And we'll just have to wait and see what happens. We'll learn it together because we will be able to broadcast that announcement from the court administrator in just a few minutes from now.

Back to you.

SAVIDGE: Mark, you mentioned the sense of nervousness amongst the legal teams. What is the sense of anticipation as far as the general public out and around that building right now? POTTER: There's not that many people here, to be honest with you. The crowds that we had here a little while ago have dissipated. I think more of the focus realistically in Tallahassee is over at the Supreme Court. There are people who are curious, and of course the political campaigns are watching this closely. This could mean an awful lot for Al Gore if those votes are thrown out. He would take the state of Florida if that were sustained on appeal. I presume that the Bush campaign beyond of course the lawyers here is watching this very closely.

This is an important case. It was sort of a sleeper case in the beginning. No one really took it as seriously as they are taking it now, but you can bet that around the country people are paying very close attention to this and are awaiting that announcement from the court administrator here at the Leon County Courthouse.

Back to you.

SAVIDGE: As we are as well. Mark potter, thank you very much outside the Leon County Courthouse.

Joining me now, a man who has been almost a semi-permanent fixture up here on this platform.

David Cardwell, looking to you for legal analysis here, we've seen this deadline slip. Initially we thought 12:00, then we're told 12:30, now we're 2:00, maybe 2:15.

Does that say anything? Can you read anything into that?

DAVID CARDWELL, CNN ELECTION LAW ANALYST: Well, we do know that Terry Lewis completed his trial in the Martin County case six hours before Judge Clark completed hers. So he had a six-hour head start on her in terms of getting his order written. So she may just need a bit more time in order to get it finished. And realizing the importance of this case, I'm sure she wanted to make sure she got it right and not just rush something out just to make sure it was done by 12:00 noon.

They really didn't set -- she had never really set a time frame. Terry Lewis had said he'd try to have it out by 12:00. Judge Clark merely said sometime today.

SAVIDGE: Now we know CNN's Gary Tuchman reporting that there was apparently conversation that took place between Judge Lewis and Judge Clark, the two judges in the case. Is that unusual? And what do you think they were talking about?

CARDWELL: Well it's unusual for them tow judges hearing very similar cases to confer wit one another. You keep a real separation between the different courtrooms and the different judges in cases. Of course, judges very often they talk about cases that are unrelated from time to time. You know, they're colleagues and they want to exchange ideas. In this case, there may have been nothing more than talking about the time to issue the order, could they do it at the same time? It could have just been that, or they may have actually discussed some aspects of the case. But more than likely, I think it was probably just coordinating the release of their rulings.

SAVIDGE: Now is it safe to say whoever loses out of these two verdicts is standing by immediately to rush in with an appeal to the Florida Supreme Court?

CARDWELL: Oh, the notices of appeal have already been typed up and signed. They're ready to go, both sides.

SAVIDGE: So they're immediately going to move into that process?

CARDWELL: Yes.

SAVIDGE: And then what sort of time frame are we talking about? We obviously looked at the 12th as being an absolute deadline, we think, in this particular issue.

CARDWELL: Well the Supreme Court has been moving very, very fast when they've gotten these cases. Now technically, this appeal from either of these two cases has to first go to our intermediate district court of appeal. But that court has been immediately certifying the question to the Supreme Court. We have a process in Florida where if the intermediate appellate court gets a case of what's called great public importance, so as to not delay a final resolution they can sort of kick it up to the Florida Supreme Court.

SAVIDGE: You being an attorney, you've had to wait, but perhaps not with the stakes so high. What is that like for an attorney right now? What do you think is going through their minds and through their stomachs?

CARDWELL: Oh, they're in agony right now. You know, you've got your competitive juices flowing while you were doing the case and getting into final oral argument and you were glad that it was finally over because it's kind of like running a race. Now you're sort of like the runner at the end of the marathon. You're exhausted, but you can't rest because you're just really anxious about the announced results. So you hope you win, but you also realize you may have another round to go on appeal.

SAVIDGE: All right, David Cardwell, thanks very much. Everyone anxiously awaiting the verdicts. We will bring them to you as soon as they come down.

In the meantime, let's go back to Stephen Frazier.

FRAZIER: Martin, thank you. I expect we'll be talking again very shortly, thanks.

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