Boies' butt is so sore he's going back to the only court that will listen to him.-g-
Gore OKs New Supreme Court
Appeal
By Linda Deutsch
AP Special Correspondent
Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2000; 4:12 p.m. EST
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. –– Vice President Al
Gore authorized a new appeal to the
Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday,
sending his legal team back to the site
of one of his biggest legal victories,
The Associated Press has learned.
Gore approved an appeal to the state's
highest court seeking an immediate
recounting of disputed votes in two
southern Florida counties that were not
included in the totals certified by the
secretary of state, two Democratic
officials said.
The officials, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said Gore's lawyers in papers
to be filed later Wednesday would ask
the justices to do one of two things:
– Supervise and direct the counting of
ballots themselves.
– Order a judge in Tallahassee to begin
doing so immediately, overturning an
earlier ruling.
Circuit Judge N. Sanders Sauls on
Tuesday refused to hear Gore's request
on an expedited basis. Instead, he
ordered a hearing for Saturday and
ordered that disputed ballots from
Miami-Dade county be transferred to
Tallahassee.
The Gore appeal will ask that counting
begin while Sauls considers whether the
new number should be added to the
official state tally, the Democratic
officials said.
One said the Gore appeal would argue
that "delay means the defeat of the
right of voters of Florida."
The maneuver, one of several undertaken
by Democrats in Florida, returns the
vice president to a court where he won a
major victory less than two weeks ago.
That's when the Florida Supreme Court
unanimously ruled that hand recounting
could continue for 12 days beyond the
original deadline set in state law.
Gore hoped the recounting would help him
overtake Bush's slim lead in the state,
but the tallying only brought Gore to
within 537 votes of his Republican
rival.
Now Gore has been trying to contest
those figures, which were certified
Sunday night when election officials
declared Bush the winner of the state's
25 electoral votes.
Meanwhile, Bush's team asked Sauls on
Wednesday to expand his order and bring
about one million ballots from
Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties to
the state capital, not just the disputed
ballots requested by Gore.
"Defendants believe that fairness
requires, at a minimum, that if the
ballots in Miami-Dade or Palm Beach
counties requested by plaintiffs are
produced, defendants should be permitted
to discover all of the ballots from
those two counties," the Bush lawyers
said in a letter to Leon County Circuit
Judge Sauls.
They submitted for his signature an
order for both districts to bundle up
all ballots cast in the presidential
election.
The move came as election officials in
both counties were packing boxes and
preparing about 14,000 disputed ballots,
a voting booth and voting machine for a
400-mile, police-escort trek to
Tallahassee.
"I think the ballots are going to be
like the O.J. Bronco ride," said Dennis
Newman, a Democratic lawyer in Palm
Beach County.
In another development, in Martin
County, election supervisor Peggy
Robbins said Tuesday she gave permission
for a Republican Party official to
remove "several hundred" incomplete
absentee ballot applications sent from
GOP voters from her office. The official
returned them filled out with corrected
voter identification numbers and other
information, said Robbins, a Republican.
In a similar case in Seminole County,
Democrats sued over the GOP handling of
absentee ballot applications.
The judge assigned to decide whether
there must be a recount of ballots in
the legal skirmishing over whether Bush
or Gore won the Florida vote ordered the
transfer even though he's not sure he
will allow a recount.
"I have no idea what we're going to do
about ballot-counting or not counting,"
said Sauls. "Perhaps we can bring the
ballots here."
He accepted an offer by the lawyer for
Miami-Dade County to have county police
drive more than 10,000 disputed ballots
about 400 miles to Tallahassee, the
state capital. A Palm Beach attorney
said he would make similar arrangements
for that county's 3,000-plus disputed
ballots, and lawyers then suggested that
a sample voting booth and voting machine
be brought in as well.
The judge said he liked that idea. Up
until then, Sauls said the plethora of
legal motions and dueling arguments were
"like getting nibbled to death by a
duck."
He insisted that without a hearing
first, "We can count till we're slap
happy," but the results wouldn't matter.
The lead lawyer for Gore, David Boies,
wasn't pleased and the vice president's
legal team moved to appeal.
"Palm Beach County lost the right to
have their votes counted because they
were 127 minutes late," said Boies. "So
we have to look at every hour every
day."
"The fact that this case involves the
presidential election is not a reason
for us to suspend due process and the
fundamental rules," said Bush attorney
Barry Richard who said it was unfair to
proceed without adequate preparation
time.
With legal papers flying into the courts
like a snowstorm, developments erupted
on every legal front. Among them:
–Circuit Court Judge Nikki Clark set a
Dec. 6 trial date for challenges to
results in Seminole County, where a
Democratic activist has accused
Republicans of tampering with absentee
ballot applications and is seeking to
have more than 15,000 votes thrown out.
If that case is successful, it would
cost Bush about 4,800 votes, well over
his 537-vote margin in the official
certification.
In that courtroom, Bush attorneys
enumerated all the cases pending in
different courts and contended they
couldn't handle all the work so quickly.
–The Florida Supreme Court extended
briefing time until Wednesday afternoon
on the issue of whether it should
consider the "butterfly ballot" issue in
Palm Beach, a claim that voters were so
confused by that ballot form they voted
for the wrong person.
–Gore's attorneys posed a plan for court
clerks or judges in Miami-Dade and Palm
Beach counties to conduct hand recounts
of some 13,000 disputed presidential
ballots. Bush attorneys opposed it.
–Gore went on television to stress the
urgency and accuse Bush's legal team of
stalling in Florida, at the same time
filing briefs along with Bush at the
U.S. Supreme Court in Washington in
advance of a historic session set for
Friday on a Bush appeal of the Florida
Supreme Court decision that extended a
state deadline for accepting recounts.
–Gore's team asked the high court to
avoid interfering in Florida's
presidential recount dispute, saying the
issue "does not belong in federal
court." Bush attorneys argued in their
brief that it was the Florida Supreme
Court ruling that was "inconsistent with
federal law" because it essentially
changed state election laws after the
election was conducted.
© Copyright 2000 The Associated Press |
