Both sides keep fighting to add to vote totals
Florida Recount
Bush Gore
Total 2,912,790 2,912,253
Lead 537
State certified results as of Sunday, November 26. Click here for complete county-by-county results
By Laura Parker, USA TODAY
MIAMI — Get set for Round 3.
The scramble for votes in Florida's election begins anew Monday, when lawyers for both Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush go to court in Tallahassee to contest Florida's election results, which were certified in Bush's favor Sunday night.
The Gore team is pressing its claim in at least three counties. Gore wants manual counts reopened in Miami-Dade, the state's most populous county and a Democratic stronghold, and in Palm Beach County. In Nassau County, it will seek to reverse the decision there to throw out the results of a machine recount.
Gore also might contest the returns in Seminole County, where Democrats have charged that Republicans illegally overstepped their role in completing some 4,700 absentee ballot applications from overseas voters.
Deadline for end of contests: Dec. 12
Under Florida law, the loser of an election can contest the results after the results are certified. The winner can file a "counter-contest" that raises different complaints.
All challenges that involve elections in multiple counties, such as the presidential election, are required to be filed in Leon County Circuit Court, in Tallahassee, Florida's capital.
In a contested election, the plaintiff seeks judicial review of ballots. The defendants — the canvassing boards of the contested counties and members of the Florida Election Commission, which includes Secretary of State Katherine Harris — have 10 days to respond. Lawyers on both sides say the court will press the defendants to respond more promptly. So, if the Gore team prevails, a hearing could be held this week.
The decision can be appealed to a Florida district court and ultimately the Florida Supreme Court.
The contests must conclude before Dec. 12, when Florida must certify its electors before the Electoral College meets Dec. 18.
The Bush team, meanwhile, is seeking to boost its vote totals among absentee military ballots. It is preparing to demand reviews of absentee military ballots that were rejected by local canvassing boards in five counties. Lawsuits to force reviews were filed Saturday in Hillsborough, Okaloosa, Pasco and Polk counties. A fifth lawsuit was filed Sunday in Orange County.
Former secretary of State James Baker reserved the Bush team's option to file a "counter-contest" depending on the Democrats' specific challenge.
"We have no assurance that the other side will stop," he said.
Baker said the Bush team will not abandon its appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, although he urged the Gore team to end its legal case against the vote in Florida.
Under Florida law, challenges to the election results must be concluded by Dec. 12, when Florida must certify its electors for the vote of the Electoral College, which takes place Dec. 18.
Gore's strategy to contest the election was detailed Sunday in Tallahassee about three hours before Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris announced that she had certified the state's election results and declared Bush the winner.
The Gore team pressed ahead with its challenge, despite the pronouncement of Bush as the winner, because it says Gore believes, as do many Democrats, that the majority of Florida voters voted for him on Election Day.
Gore's lawyers say he believes that there are enough votes for him among the thousands of ballots that did not register a vote for president in machine counts to erase Bush's slim lead. These uncounted votes, known as the "undervote," were not included in Florida's certified election returns, except for two counties that manually counted their votes: Broward and Volusia.
In their public remarks Sunday, Democrats characterized the "undervote" as votes that have never been counted.
"The idea of 'one person, one vote' is central to our system of government and must never be compromised," Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman said after Bush was declared the winner in Florida.
In Miami-Dade County alone, where the manual count was shut down abruptly last week before it was concluded, there were 10,750 undervotes. Gore's lawyers also contended that there are hundreds of potential Gore votes in Nassau and Palm Beach counties.
"Until these votes are counted, this election cannot be over," said David Boies, Gore's chief lawyer. "There are thousands of votes that haven't been counted once."
"This is one of the most amazing legal chess games we've ever seen played," said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola University Law School in Los Angeles. "I don't think even the parties know what their next move will be. It changes from hour to hour."
As of Sunday night, the Democrats' strategies for contesting the vote were these:
Miami-Dade County: The Democrats will contest the results where the hand count of the county's 654,000 ballots was never completed. At issue are the 10,750 "undervotes" that Democrats say have never been counted.
Gore's lawyers say that the county's canvassing board had no legal authority to stop the count once it had begun.
The contest in Miami-Dade is the most controversial because of the chaotic and sudden end to the count on Wednesday. Democrats blame Republicans for the end to the count. Democrats say "mob" action on the part of the GOP "intimidated" the canvassing board into ending the count prematurely.
The hand count was stopped by the canvassing board after the board concluded it could not complete the full count by Sunday's 5 p.m. deadline and should instead count only the "undervotes." That decision set off an angry protest from Republicans that quickly grew into a fracas in the county election office, in which Republicans pounded on doors and windows. But board chairman David Leahy denied that the outburst scared the board into ending the count.
More significantly, before it stopped counting Wednesday, the canvassing board added 388 new votes, with a net gain of 156 votes for Gore, to the tally. But those results were not forwarded to Tallahassee. Democrats say those were legally cast ballots that should be counted, as should as the rest of the "undervote."
Palm Beach County: The secretary of State's office did not include any of Palm Beach County's manual recount in the state's certified results because the canvassing board failed to complete it by the deadline of 5 p.m. Sunday. Additionally, Democrats contend that the Palm Beach canvassing board failed to follow the proper standard for interpreting a "dimpled" ballot, one that has been held up in court.
Democrats took the canvassing board to circuit court twice during the manual count to force the board to adopt a broader standard. But the court gave the board discretion to make its own judgments. Consequently, the canvassing board discarded more "dimpled" ballots that its counterpart in Broward County did.
Democratic observers who watched the recount in West Palm Beach suggest that 1,000 to 2,000 ballots were improperly rejected by the board. If included in the count, those ballots, the observers say, could provide a net gain for Gore of 300 to 600 votes.
Nassau County: The canvassing board voted to certify the election night vote results instead of the results from the recount because the recount inadvertently missed about 200 presidential ballots. The shift resulted in a net loss of 51 votes for Gore. The Gore team will ask the court to reverse that decision and require Nassau County to submit the results of the machine recount.
Seminole County: Boies said a challenge to the results in the heavily Republican county north of Orlando has not yet been ruled out.
A local election official allowed Republican campaign workers to correct incomplete absentee ballot applications sent out to Republicans but did not notify other absentee voters that their ballot applications were flawed.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties flooded the county with applications for absentee ballots on behalf of their respective voters. Bush earned more than 10,000 absentee votes and Gore received about 5,200.
A lawsuit filed by a Democratic activist, which seeks to have those ballots disqualified, is scheduled to be heard Wednesday in Seminole County Circuit Court. At stake are 4,700 votes for Bush. If those ballots are thrown out, Gore allies say, the vice president will win Florida.
The contest elsewhere in Florida revolves around absentee military ballots. The Republicans' challenges are focused in five counties where those ballots were disqualified. They are seeking to reinstate ballots that were rejected because they lacked proper signatures, dates or postmarks.
The five separate lawsuits were filed after the Bush campaign withdrew a lawsuit filed in Leon County on Friday that sought to force 12 counties to include the absentee ballots in their certified results. In that lawsuit, the Bush camp estimated that 500 disqualified absentee ballots were at stake.
Bush officials said Sunday night that the counties where they filed their claims may have amended their returns to include the disqualified ballots. But a top Bush lawyer also said, "Everything is still on the table for us."
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