Results of recount expected Thursday

David Royse

Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2000 | 11:01 a.m.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Florida election officials began a recount of nearly 6 million votes today with the stunningly close presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore in the balance.

Florida's secretary of state said the recount should be finished by the end of the day Thursday. Both national parties were sending teams of lawyers to monitor.

Election officials in Hillsborough County, around Tampa, were among the first to begin the recount.

At last count, Bush led Gore by 1,655 votes in the unofficial Associated Press count with all Florida precincts reporting but an unknown number of absentee ballots yet to be counted. Some vote counts had the margin slightly higher or closer.

The vote totals showed Bush and Gore with roughly 49 percent apiece, and Green Party candidate Ralph Nader with 2 percent.

The pressure on the recount was intense because Florida, with its 25 electoral votes, will decide the winner of the presidential election.

Election supervisors in the state's 67 counties were ordered to start the recount as soon as possible today. With the vote difference less than 0.5 percent, an automatic recount was triggered under state law.

"We think it's important that the people of Florida have an answer as quickly as possible," said Clay Roberts, director of the state Division of Elections. "But also we think it's important that we do this right."

In each county, a three-member canvassing board made up of a county judge, the chairman of the county commission and the local elections supervisor, recount the votes. The makeup of the canvassing board is supposed to insulate the process from politics, Roberts said.

In Tallahassee, the state capital, the results would be certified by Gov. Jeb Bush, brother of the GOP nominee, Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris and Roberts, also a Republican appointee.

Representatives of both national parties were headed to the state. The Gore campaign said former Secretary of State Warren Christopher was in charge of their effort.

Senior Democratic officials also said a team of three lawyers, including Democratic Party counsel Joe Sandler, was on the way to Florida to observe the final canvass.

Florida's attorney general, Democrat Bob Butterworth, was on national television commenting on the situation today, and the Republicans weren't happy about his involvement.

"My advice as a lawyer to either side would be I'd be a little hesitant about giving an acceptance speech right now," said Butterworth, who also was Gore's Florida campaign chairman.

"We don't need the attorney general to tell us how to follow the law," Roberts said. He said the job of overseeing elections "falls solely to the secretary of state."

Meanwhile, Jeb Bush headed back to Tallahassee. Harris met with Roberts and other election officials.

Jeb Bush called elections officials from Austin twice in the middle of the night asking for information, Roberts said. The governor had spent the evening watching election returns with the Bush family.

Final results could revolve around absentee ballots and a dispute in Palm Beach County, which Gore won by more than 110,000 votes.

Elections supervisors had sent out 585,000 absentee ballots and 416,000 had been returned by late Monday. Underdetermined is the number of overseas ballots, primarily for military personnel and their families, that have been counted. The state counted about 2,300 overseas ballots in the 1996 presidential election.

The law allows 10 days to count outstanding overseas ballots as long as they are postmarked no later than Election Day.

Roberts said it was "technically" possible the absentee ballots could change the result of the election, but it would be extremely rare.

In Palm Beach County, hundreds of angry voters complained to elections office that they feared they had mistakenly cast their votes for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan instead of Gore.