Wednesday Is New Fla. Vote Deadline
By ANNE GEARAN
.c The Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - The Republican Florida official overseeing the state's chaotic presidential vote tally laid down a Wednesday afternoon deadline for Democratic strongholds to justify why they should be allowed to keep counting.
A state judge ruled earlier in the day that the state should collect returns from all 67 counties by 5 p.m., as required under Florida law. The state said that count gives the election - and perhaps the White House - to Texas Gov. George W. Bush by 300 votes.
At the same time, the judge said counties still recounting ballots by hand at Democratic request may be able to make a case for filing those totals late.
Circuit Judge Terry Lewis' ruling contained a harsh warning for Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris and drew new bounds for both sides in the ongoing legal shoving match.
Both sides found something to like in the Solomonic ruling, but that did not stop one heavily Democratic county from appealing.
``The veil has been lifted,'' said new Gore lawyer David Boies, the litigator who helped win the government's Microsoft antitrust case.
Gore partisans said the recounts they requested will go forward, though only Palm Beach County was scheduled to keep reviewing ballots on Wednesday. Volusia County had completed a full manual recount; Broward County was holding off on a decision about whether to order a full hand county; And Miami-Dade voted 2-1 Tuesday night against a full hand county.
Democrats hope those recounts by human eye and hand will turn up additional votes for their candidate.
Harris set down a 2 p.m. deadline Wednesday for election officials in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties to justify why she ought to accept late totals that would come in after end-of-business Tuesday.
``It's another attempt in many ways to put a burden on people who are terribly taxed right now,'' Gore campaign chairman William Daley said.
If she rejects appeals for more time, Democrats could sue.
Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes said the Texas governor is a three-time winner in Florida, counting the Nov. 7 election, an automatic recount done last week and the totals certified to the state capital in Tallahassee Tuesday.
An unknown additional number of overseas absentee ballots remain to be counted by Friday night.
The state is critical to determining the winner of the 2000 presidential election. Victory by either Bush or Gore would give him the 270 votes needed to fashion a majority in the Electoral College.
In Volusia County, before completing their count, county officials appealed Lewis' ruling to a midlevel Florida appeals court with the expectation that the state's highest court, the Florida Supreme Court, would hear it.
Separately, Palm Beach sent appeal documents to the state Supreme Court seeking clarification of conflicting legal guidance on their recount. The county planned to begin a broad recount Wednesday morning.
Miami-Dade County hand counted three precincts Tuesday night and awarded Gore a net gain of six votes. But the board voted 2-1 against ordering a full manual recount, rejecting a request by Democrats.
On yet another legal front, the GOP filed notice that they plan to appeal a federal judge's ruling that allowed the recounts to go forward. The GOP claims they are unconstitutional since they mean some voters are treated differently depending on where they live. The case could be heard in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as soon as Wednesday.
Numerous voters have sued separately over alleged voting irregularities in Palm Beach. Celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz represents some of them.
State officials say Lewis' ruling means they can proceed on schedule to a final vote certification by Saturday. That is the day after a deadline for absentee ballots mailed in from overseas.
Democrats say Harris is a partisan Republican - she campaigned for Bush - who decided to stick to the letter of Florida law in order to pull out a squeaker of a victory for him.
Lewis ruled that there was nothing in state law to prevent Harris from considering late totals, and warned her in strong language that she would need good reason to ignore them.
``To determine ahead of time that such returns will be ignored ... is not the exercise of discretion. It is the abdication of that discretion,'' Lewis wrote.
Elsewhere:
The Democratic Party filed a motion in state court arguing that Broward County should be ordered to conduct a full hand count of its 588,000 ballots. The motion said the decision by the county canvassing board not to conduct such a recount was based on an erroneous opinion by Harris, who said a manual recount could only be conducted if the board found a problem with the computer.
In West Palm Beach, a judge considered the lawsuits of voters seeking a new vote in their county. The voters argue the punch-card ballots they were given on Election Day may have confused them enough to mistakenly vote for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan when they intended to vote for Gore.
AP-NY-11-14-00 2151EST
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Military Overseas Ballots Come Soon
By TERRY SPENCER
.c The Associated Press
MIAMI (AP) - Step to the front of the line.
The U.S. Postal Service is hurrying military overseas ballots arriving in Florida through the delivery process, getting them to the 67 county election departments the same day they arrive in the country.
Because of the close race between Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore to capture decisive Florida, the postal service says it is trying especially hard to assure the ballots arrive in the proper counties before Friday's midnight deadline.
The ballots are being separated by workers at the Air Mail Center near Miami International Airport.
Ballots destined for South Florida counties are being driven to the appropriate post offices for delivery that day. Those being sent to counties in north and central Florida are being flown to regional mail centers each morning, taken to the appropriate post office and delivered.
As of Monday, the postal service had delivered 446 military overseas ballots to Florida's counties since Nov. 8. Tuesday's figures were not immediately available.
An informal Associated Press survey of 64 of Florida's 67 election supervisors found that they had mailed out more than 19,300 overseas ballots. Of those, more than 10,000 had been returned and the majority of them counted. It was not immediately known how many ballots were outstanding. Election supervisors plan to count the remaining ballots on Friday and send the results to the Florida secretary of state's office.
``We understand the urgency of this situation and realize that the entire presidential election could rest on these ballots,'' postal service spokeswoman Enola C. Rice said Tuesday.
Rice said the envelopes are marked ``absentee ballot,'' making them easy to spot among the hundreds and sometimes thousands of pieces of military mail arriving at the center about midnight daily.
Workers pull the ballots and mark each with a tracking number so it can be followed through the process. Within hours, the ballots are put on trucks and planes heading throughout the state and delivered to the counties that afternoon.
A regular piece of mail, such as a letter, normally takes one or two days to reach its recipient, Rice said.
She said such a procedure cannot be done with civilian overseas absentee ballots because they arrive at numerous air mail centers throughout the country, not just in Florida.
AP-NY-11-14-00 2144EST
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Bush Leads Official Florida Count by 300 Votes
By RON FOURNIER
.c The Associated Press
(Nov. 14) - One week into America's election limbo, Florida's Republican secretary of state certified George W. Bush's narrow lead Tuesday night, even as thousands of disputed ballots were counted into the night at Al Gore's behest. ''When is it going to end?'' asked Bush aide James A. Baker III.
There was no answer in sight.
Baker floated a proposal to cease the ballot-by-ballot fight for Florida's 25 electoral votes and the White House, but Democrats said he offered nothing new - and dismissed it outright. With lawyers and judges front and center in the presidential election, nerves began to fray and adjectives failed to serve.
''It's like the seventh day of being held hostage,'' stammered Jeb Bush, governor of Florida and the harried brother of the GOP presidential hopeful.
Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Bush supporter, announced Tuesday night that the Texas governor had a 300-vote lead out of 6 million votes cast - with overseas absentee ballots and ongoing recount totals pending.
Her announcement came almost three hours after a 5 p.m. vote-counting deadline, upheld earlier by state Judge Terry Lewis. He turned aside Gore's arguments to lift the deadline, but gave Harris the authority to accept or reject follow-up manual recount totals afterward.
Lewis' decision was a setback for the vice president, who wanted a clear order lifting the Tuesday deadline, but his lawyers found solace in ruling language urging Harris to consider ''all appropriate facts and circumstances'' when recount totals are filed.
Harris said she will require counties filing late recount numbers to explain in writing by 2 p.m. Wednesday why new vote totals should be accepted. ''Unless I determine, in the exercise of my discretion, that these facts and circumstances ... justify an amendment to today's official returns'' the totals will stand, she said.
Gore decided to hold off an appeal of Lewis' ruling and press forward with recounts in four Democratic-leaning counties. Gore's advisers hope Harris will approve the hand-counted ballots - though they expect the worst - and are prepared to appeal if she does not.
''If the secretary of state arbitrarily refuses to accept the amended returns based on the recount and violates what this court has ruled ... which is to accept those results unless she has good reason not to, then we will be back in court,'' said a new member of Gore's massive legal team, David Boies.
With Harris' announcement, the battle lines were clearly drawn:
Bush's team says the manual recounts are conducted with no set standards in Democratic-leaning counties with the sole purpose of pushing Gore ahead. The vice president's team argues that the painstaking process is the only way to ensure that every Florida voter is heard.
The next pivot points will be when overseas ballots are counted, with results due by midnight Friday, and when Harris is confronted with the recount totals that could threaten Bush's lead.
The race tumbled to the courts after a statewide machine recount trimmed Bush's lead from 1,784 votes to a few hundred, prompting Gore to push for painstaking manual recounts and Bush to fight them in courts of law and public opinion.
Officials in two counties tabulated ballots by hand Tuesday, with action in two other jurisdictions pending.
Shoving matches and shouting fits punctuated the action inside and outside Florida's courtrooms. Jeb Bush said things were getting ''nerve-racking'' throughout his state.
''I can't even walk around outside now,'' he said at a town hall meeting 60 miles northwest of Tallahassee.
President Clinton weighed in from Air Force One, telling AP reporters he hopes the dispute doesn't lead to a presidency crippled by controversy.
''I think it's too soon to say that bitterness and partisanship will paralyze the next president,'' Clinton said as he flew from Hawaii to Brunei. ''We don't know that.''
With the razor-thin lead in ballots counted so far, Baker said presidential candidate Bush would accept the results of manual recounts collected by close of business Tuesday and the overseas absentee ballots due in Friday. Both sides would also drop their dueling lawsuits, Baker said.
''It would give us some degree of finality,'' Baker told reporters. ''When is it going to end? I ask you, when is it going to end?''
''It truly was not a proposal,'' sniffed Gore campaign chairman William Daley during a visit to Capitol Hill to calm Democrats leaders. ''It was strictly, in my opinion, an inaccurate description of the laws of Florida. The laws of Florida will be determined by the courts.''
If any Democrats were jittery about the course Gore was steering for the party, they appeared to benefit from hand-holding on Tuesday by Daley.
''The support of the caucus is solid,'' said House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, even as Democrats said privately they would reassess after final overseas ballots are counted Friday.
Bush's team has heard some complaints from Republicans who want him to be more aggressive in courts and in the media.
''There's a sense of helplessness, that we're watching an American presidential election being stolen right out from under our nose and nothing's being done to stop it,'' said Rusty Paul, former Georgia GOP chairman.
Both Bush and Gore were lying low. Gore called for calm on Monday but declined to field reporters' questions. Bush monitored the legal fight from his ranch in Texas for a third straight day and expected to talk to journalists Wednesday.
The presidents-in-waiting are trying to strike a balance between their desire to be seen as prepared - and a fear that they will appear overeager.
Gore leads in the nationwide popular vote by just 200,000 votes out of 100 million cast, but the Electoral College tally is so close that whoever takes Florida almost certainly will win the White House. Only three times in the nation's history has a candidate won the popular vote but lost the presidential race, the last time in 1888.
Not counting Florida, Bush carried 29 states for 246 electoral votes. Gore counted 19 states plus the District of Columbia for 262 electoral votes, with 270 needed for victory. Gore led in New Mexico but the state remained too close to call.
Republicans have talked about challenging Gore's victories in close-voting states other than Florida, but the tactic would be a long shot. A new poll Tuesday said voters believe the results of the recount in Florida should determine the next president.
The Bush campaign has said for days it would accept the results of absentee ballots and those certified by Tuesday. Baker threw in the manual counts in a further effort to portray Bush as the only candidate who wanted the issue resolved quickly.
He said Bush was taking a risk because manual counts could erode his lead. But Republicans have closely monitored the recount process and knew there was little chance that Gore could overtake the Texan by Tuesday night.
''That's like offering sleeves from his vest,'' Christopher cracked.
Christopher appealed to the public's sense of fair play.
''I see a yearning in the country for the vote to be correctly counted, and I think we're going down that path. That's what I see the country most interested in,'' he said.
Shortly after Harris' announcement, Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes told a news conference that the Gore drive ''cannot possibly result in a fair and accurate count of the votes.'' Gore spokesman Chris Lehane said hand counting is the only way to ''make sure the will of the people is reflected.''
Legal and political operatives zipped in and out of Florida courtrooms, while ballot counters plodded into the evening. With developments coming rapidly, confusion reigned:
- The Bush camp filed a notice of appeal in Atlanta to reserve its right to challenge a federal judge who refused on Monday to block the manual counts.
- In Volusia County, Gore cut Bush's lead by 98 votes after officials completed a hand count of some 184,000 ballots.
- Election authorities in Broward County decided to add four more votes to Gore - votes that turned up during a hand count of three precincts on Monday.
- Palm Beach election officials decided to return Wednesday morning to begin hand counting the county's 430,000 ballots.
-Officials in Miami-Dade County began a sample hand recount of 5,871 ballots in three overwhelmingly Democratic precincts.
- The National Right to Life Committee, an anti-abortion group, filed a federal lawsuit in Orlando seeking to block counties from conducting manual recounts.
-The U.S. Postal Service was expediting delivery of military overseas ballots to assure they arrive in county election departments before Friday's deadline.
- Far to the west, Gore had a 374-vote lead in New Mexico's seesawing race for 5 electoral votes after officials announced they had misread absentee results.
In Florida, numerous voters have sued separately over alleged voting irregularities in Palm Beach. Celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz represents some of them, and Gore's team is helping collect affidavits from voters with complaints. Gore has not ruled out a lawsuit challenging ballot irregularities as a last resort in his Florida fight.
AP-NY-11-14-00 2041EST
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The Personal Attacks Begin
Florida Secretary of State No Stranger To Controversy
By DARA KAM
.c The Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Nov. 14) - A Harvard-educated blueblood from one of Florida's wealthiest families, Secretary of State Katherine Harris is no stranger to controversy.
She's been investigated for campaign finance violations and criticized for spending state money jetting around the world, spending up to $500 a night for hotel rooms in Washington. She's also been one of George W. Bush's most prominent political supporters, campaigning for him in Florida and elsewhere.
Harris placed herself in the middle of the increasingly partisan struggle over Florida's 25 electoral votes Monday when she required all 67 counties to wrap up their recounts by 5 p.m. Tuesday.
She sits as one of six elected members on the Florida Cabinet, which with Gov. Jeb Bush, decides on issues ranging from the mundane to the momentous affecting schools, the environment and other statewide concerns.
As secretary of state, Harris oversees elections, the state's historical and cultural resources and also keeps the state's public records. She makes $106,000 a year.
''For what is probably the easiest of the Cabinet positions, she's made it awful difficult,'' said state Democratic Party spokesman Tony Welch.
In her first two years on the job, Harris spent $100,000 in Florida tax dollars on foreign trade missions to places like Barbados and Brazil as well as the Sydney Olympics. Her travel expenses were significantly higher than the other five Cabinet members and three times more than Gov. Jeb Bush.
Harris defended her travel, saying she has brought millions of dollars of international trade to the state and established cultural ties such as a cooperative ballet between the state and Mexico.
Sandra Mortham, the incumbent who lost to Harris in a nasty Republican primary in 1998, said every secretary of state emphasizes their own key areas of concern.
''For me, it was elections, and it was to get the elections online and on the Internet,'' Mortham said. ''Katherine has decided that she wanted to move the office more into the area of international relations.''
Ben McKay, Harris' chief of staff, said Harris was too busy with Monday's court hearing to return calls.
In 1994, Harris became implicated in a campaign finance scheme surrounding her first run for public office. She was forced to reimburse $20,000 after state investigators discovered that employees of Riscorp, Inc., an insurer, were improperly reimbursed for their contributions to her 1994 Senate campaign.
She said she had no knowledge that anything was amiss with the contributions.
This year, Harris approved a taxpayer-financed public service announcement featuring retired Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf, a Bush ally, urging Floridians to vote. She received criticism for spending the public's $30,000 to finance the ads, which aired during the final month of the presidential campaign.
McKay said Harris' office asked Schwartzkopf, as a prominent Floridian, to make the ads months ago, after Gloria Estefan and Tiger Woods turned down the request.
Harris, 43, earned a degree in history from the all-female Agnes Scott College in Georgia. She studied art and Spanish in Madrid, and philosophy and religion in Geneva.
Her grandfather, citrus magnate Ben Hill Griffin, served as a longtime legislator. He was also a friend of former state Republican Party chairman, Tom Slade, who hand-picked Harris for her Senate run. Her cousin, J.D. Alexander, is a state representative.
The Cabinet job, one that has been largely ceremonial, is being abolished after Harris' current term, which expires in January 2003.
Harris, who is married to businessman Anders Ebbeson, listed her net worth as more than $6.5 million as of December 1999, according to her latest financial disclosure.
AP-NY-11-13-00 2005EST
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