Seminole County judge agreed to hear a lawsuit seeking to throw out all 15,000 absentee ballots cast there.
Circuit Court Judge Debra Nelson in Sanford, Seminole County, set a hearing on that case for Nov. 27, saying she wanted to allow a week for the parties to gather evidence.
Throwing out the Seminole votes could give the race to Gore, trailing Bush by 930 votes in Florida. Bush won 10,006 absentee votes in the east central Florida county to Gore's 5,209.
For both Bush and Gore, winning Florida's 25 electoral college votes is the key to moving into the White House.
Republicans are seeking in the various lawsuits to maintain the status quo in the tally, while the Democrats are seeking ways to boost Gore's votes or cut Bush's.
A Seminole County man, Democrat Harry Jacobs, sued to disqualify all the county's absentee ballots. He alleged that the county's Republican election supervisor broke the law by allowing his party's volunteers to fill in missing data on about 4,700 absentee ballot requests that might otherwise have been rejected as incomplete. |
