Seesawing Into the Holiday
Wednesday, November 22, 2000
By John P. Martin
Capping a day of stunning developments in the disputed
presidential race, a Florida state appeals court
Wednesday night upheld the Miami-Dade election board's
decision to drop its manual recount, an attorney for the
board said.
The board decided to
stop the manual recount
earlier Wednesday,
saying it could not
meet the Florida
Supreme Court's Sunday
deadline for completing
the tally. Democrats,
who had petitioned the
court to order the
board to resume the
count, promised an
appeal to the Florida
Supreme Court.
Earlier Wednesday,
Republican George W.
Bush blasted the
Florida Supreme Court
for permitting
selective manual recounts, then asked the U.S. Supreme
Court to overturn that decision.
Meanwhile, Democrat Al Gore won a fight for consideration
of so-called "dimpled" ballots in the Palm Beach County
recount, but suffered a blow when Miami-Dade County
abandoned the recount there because officials said they
couldn't inspect all 640,000 ballots by the court's 5
p.m. Sunday deadline. Gore's campaign promised to
challenge the decision.
The moves highlighted another roller-coaster cycle in the
historic race that some hoped had neared a settlement
when the state Supreme Court said the recounts should be
included in the final returns.
Instead, that Tuesday night ruling prompted a day when
legal challenges, twists and political charges unfolded
with breakneck speed as the candidates scrambled for the
hundreds of votes that could decide the White House.
It also coincided with news that Bush's running mate,
Dick Cheney, suffered a minor heart attack, his fourth.
Doctors said Cheney, 59, would stay at a Washington,
D.C., hospital for up to three days.
'The Court Rewrote the Law'
Bush, in his first public comments in days, said
Florida's highest court "overreached" its authority. "The
court cloaked its ruling in legalistic language. But make
no mistake: The court rewrote the law," the Texas
governor told reporters at the state capitol in Austin.
"It changed the rules and it did so after the election is
over."
His appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, filed late
Wednesday, argues that the state Supreme Court violated
federal law that requires voting rules to be established
before an election.
Bush attorney Ted Olson said a second petition to the
court would challenge the legitimacy of what he called
the "chaotic, seemingly endless, constantly changing and
highly subjective" manual recount process that he said
violates the constitutional rights of voters whose
ballots have not been reviewed. Olson said the campaign
asked the court to hear the case before Dec. 12, when
states are to choose their Electoral College
representatives.
Gore's chief campaign attorney, David Boies, saw no basis
for such an appeal. "Regardless of whether you're winning
or losing, it's a matter of Florida law," he said Tuesday
night.
Bush attorneys have cited the same constitutional
argument in a petition to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals in Atlanta. That court required both sides to
file written briefs by next Tuesday.
Soldiers of Misfortune?
And, on another front, the Bush camp asked a Florida
Circuit Court judge to order election officials statewide
to reconsider absentee military ballots that were
disqualified over questionable postmarks. Republicans
contend that as many as 40 percent of the ballots were
thrown out, and hope the returns could help Bush pad the
930-vote lead he held after absentee ballots were counted
on Saturday.
Bush asked Gore to agree
to such a review, but
Gore's campaign
chairman, William Daley,
would say only that the
campaign wouldn't
contest "legally cast"
ballots.
Daley's failed challenge
of Miami-Dade County
election officials to
stop their hand recount
could prove devastating
for Gore. The state's
largest county,
Miami-Dade was believed
to hold the votes
necessary for Gore to
overtake Bush's lead in
Florida.
The unanimous vote by
that county's canvassing board to halt their recount came
after the three panel members, two independents and one
Democrat, first proposed to recount only 10,750 ballots
rejected by voting machines. But that move appeared to
conflict with state law prohibiting partial recounts;
Republicans cried foul and the board ultimately gave up.
"I do not believe we have the ability to conduct a full,
accurate recount," explained the board chairman, Larry
King, in announcing the halt.
Daley countered that the canvassing board couldn't
abdicate its role since it already ruled that a recount
was necessary.
"We hope that the counts continue," Daley told reporters
in Washington. "That's what the [state] Supreme Court
wanted."
Hanging by a Chad
As the battle for the nation's highest office appeared
headed to its highest court, new hearings in Broward and
Palm Beach counties focused again on those tiny ballot
squares, chads, in an effort to clarify once and for all
what constitutes a valid vote.
In Palm Beach County, Judge Jorge Labarga stopped short
of outlining the standards for accepting a ballot, but
gave the election canvassing board the right to consider
dimpled or pregnant "chads," the paper squares punched by
voters to indicate their choice.
"The canvassing board cannot have in place a policy which
provides for a per se exclusion of any ballots," Labarga
ruled after Democrats complained that hundreds of Gore
ballots had been excluded and asked the judge to clarify
the standard. "Each ballot must be considered in light of
the totality of the circumstances."
The decision came after
the board chairman,
Charles Burton, admitted
that discerning a
voter's intent from the
half-punched cards is
"impossible" but
acknowledged the
importance of the issue.
"If we are to consider
any impression.... We
are probably talking
about a difference of
thousands of votes,
either way," he said.
That would potentially
be enough to swing the
election. The latest
unofficial tallies gave
Gore 266 new votes in the three heavily Democratic
counties — Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach.
The state Supreme Court only tangentially addressed the
issue of ballot standards in its ruling, citing a
decade-old Illinois court decision. "These voters should
not be disfranchised where their intent may be
ascertained with reasonable certainty, simply because the
chad they punched did not completely dislodge from the
ballot," the court noted. But it did not set standards.
In their unanimous decision, the seven justices said
Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Republican, erred
when she said she would ignore amended returns submitted
more than one week after the election.
"Twenty-five years ago, this Court commented that the
will of the people, not a hyper-technical reliance upon
statutory provisions, should be our guiding principle,"
the court wrote in its decision.
GOP leaders in Florida and Washington decried the ruling
and promised a fight.
Both Florida Senate
President John McKay and
new Florida House
Speaker Tom Feeney
warned that their
GOP-controlled
legislature might take
action in the case,
referring to the federal
law that allows state
legislatures to choose
their presidential
electors if voters do
not by Dec. 12.
In Washington, House
Majority Whip Tom DeLay,
R-Texas, called the
court's action
"intrusive,
anti-democratic, and contemptuous of self-government" and
said he hoped it would be "vigorously challenged in
federal court."
Broward was expected to complete its recount Wednesday,
but Palm Beach had continued. Also in Palm Beach, lawyers
for Judicial Watch, a nonpartisan watchdog critical of
the Clinton-Gore administration, asked Labarga for the
right to inspect the ballots for potential forgeries. The
judge withheld any decision.
Both candidates were expected to maintain low profiles
over the next two days. Gore served Thanksgiving dinners
with his family at Washington soup kitchens before
retreating to his private residence for the holiday. Bush
scheduled Thanksgiving dinner with friends and family in
Austin and then planned to return to his ranch in
Crawford, Texas.
— The Associated Press contributed to this report. |
