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US election: Court to decide the fate

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November 13, 2000 

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Democrats argue George W. Bush's legal effort to block a manual recount in four Florida counties is not a matter for the federal courts and note that the tradition of counting by hand started with the nation's founding.Lawyers for the Florida Democratic Party filed their response Sunday evening to the Bush campaign's Saturday request for a federal injunction halting the hand recount requested in four counties — Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Volusia.Bush has a 288-vote lead over Democrat Al Gore in the count for Florida and its 25 electoral votes that are likely to decide the presidential election. 

The recount has already started in Volusia and Palm Beach counties, while Broward was about to start recounting sample precincts Monday and Miami-Dade has a hearing on the question Tuesday.

Gore adviser Warren Christopher and William Daley, who was his campaign chairman, were scheduled to meet Monday morning with Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris to determine her position on a 5 p.m. 

Tuesday deadline to get certified vote results from counties. Returns that come in after the deadline may be ignored, which would nullify the results of manual recounts certain to be incomplete by then. She plans to announce her position on it Monday, but two counties — Volusia and Palm Beach — are prepared to go to court in an effort to get that deadline extended so the manual recounts can be completed.

A Gore legal adviser said Sunday the case does not belong in federal court and that the standards for manual recounts are the same in Florida as in Texas — to determine the voter's intent. And he said a manual recount is clearly constitutional, supporting the basic principle of one man, one-vote. ``We want a full, fair and accurate count to go forward,'' said Jenny Backus, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee. Bush's lead representative in the Florida recount, former Secretary of State James A. 

Baker III, said Sunday that the hand recount has no standards and leaves the process open to ``mischief.'' The GOP maintains a hand count is more subject to error than a machine count, and Republicans maintain that it's not fair for Gore to pick selected counties — strongly Democratic — for a manual recount.

Gore's legal adviser, speaking on background, said the federal government should not be telling states how to handle their own elections. He said the Bush campaign's case lacks merit and fails to establish how counting the vote does serious harm to the Bush campaign.