Gore turns to Florida judge

Anne Gearan

Thursday, Nov. 16, 2000 | 11:17 a.m.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Al Gore asked a Florida judge today to require the state to count disputed presidential ballots being tallied by hand after a deadline passed.

At issue was a decision by Florida's top elections official, George W. Bush supporter Katherine Harris, to ignore any late returns. Democrats say that ruling violated a court order earlier in the week that said she had flexibility in considering counties' requests for more time.

"We think her failure to take the direction of the court should be corrected by the court," Gore lawyer Dexter Douglass argued at a hearing before the same judge who ruled in the case Tuesday.

The Democrats asked Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis to enforce his earlier order, but they did not specify how.

"We are not asking you to hold her in contempt of court -- only that the court make an effort to give her direction ... that she comply with the court's order," Douglas argued.

A lawyer for Harris, Joe Klock, said she acted scrupulously to follow Florida law and Lewis' order.

"Rather than violating the order of this court, we paid particular attention to following the orders of this court," Klock argued.

Lewis did not indicate when he would rule.

Gore, who trails Bush by 300 votes in decisive Florida, is fighting on several legal front to continue hand recounts of ballots in some counties.

The Democrats want final vote certification in Florida delayed until all those totals are in.

Lewis had upheld Tuesday's state deadline for submitting results of recounts to the state elections board. But he also had said Harris had flexibility in deciding whether to accept late filings.

Four counties -- three of them heavily Democratic -- asked for an extension. She turned them down late Wednesday.

It was not clear how much authority the state court had to intervene, and the case could pass quickly to the state Supreme Court, where other election-related cases are pending.

Separately, Bush's federal-court challenge to hand recounts was on pause today as an appeals court gave Democrats until Friday to respond.

Bush wants the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to stop the hand counts pending a ruling on whether they violate voters' rights to be treated equally under the law.

The court asked both sides to submit a factual summary of all events surrounding the controversy, including a record of state court actions. Those also must be submitted by 7 a.m. EST on Friday.

Democrats filed papers today arguing their side of constitutional challenges to recounts in the Atlanta appeals court.

"This case is simply not appropriate for federal court intervention of any kind at this point in the proceeding," Gore's lawyers argued.

They were responding to arguments the Bush team made in court papers Wednesday.

Bush lawyers asked the court to stop hand recounts and warned that Americans are witnessing the "disintegration" of the way they elect presidents. The Bush camp complains hand counts are prone to error and treat voters differently based on where they live.

"Eight days after Florida's presidential vote, the entire nation is witnessing the disintegration of a process that was designed to elect America's president," Bush's lawyers said in their submission.

"The Florida manual recount process is being used to eliminate any possibility of an orderly, rational and final end to the election."

The court did not schedule a hearing nor say when it might rule. It did say that the case will not pass through a three-judge panel on its way to consideration by the entire court. Instead, all 12 judges, a mix of Republicans and Democrats, would consider the case as a group.

Whichever side loses in Atlanta could then appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The winner in the stalemated Florida vote will claim the state's decisive 25 electoral votes and almost certainly the White House. Gore is hoping to pick up enough votes in the recounts to overtake Bush's narrow, 300-vote lead, with about 2,500 overseas absentee ballots still uncounted.

The Florida Supreme Court refused to stop the recounts for now. But Harris, Florida's top election official, announced Wednesday night she saw no reason to accept late filings.

Harris declared it was her duty under Florida law to reject recount requests that four counties submitted earlier in the day.

Democrats have sharply criticized Harris, who supported Bush's campaign, as a partisan Republican and suggested her actions have been motivated by her politics. But Klock defended her today.

"More than half the lawyers who have been working on this for the secretary are Democrats and I bet probably half of them voted for Gore," he said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

Gore campaign Chairman William Daley criticized Harris' decision as premature: "There was an attempt to bring a curtain down," he said.

Harris stepped to the microphones to make her announcement seven hours after the 2 p.m. deadline she had set for counties to petition for the right to update their returns.