Recounts grind on; disputed dimpled ballots could become key

Florida's Supreme Court granted Al Gore's request to keep the state's presidential recounts going Tuesday night, even as vote-counters plowed through ballots and shrunk George W. Bush's minuscule advantage in the closest presidential race in decades.

''We will move forward with a full, fair and accurate count,'' the vice president said two hours after the high court ruled.

Miles away, Palm Beach county elections chief Charles Burton broke the news to his weary vote counters. ''So keep on counting,'' he said.

Bush holds a 930-vote lead in the official, but uncertified vote tallies from Election Day, with overseas absentee ballots included. Gore has slowly been eating into that lead in recent days as recounts have proceeded at his urging in three Democratic counties.

Gore picked up 266 votes in recounts through Tuesday night, cutting into Bush's minuscule lead.

In an unanimous opinion, the seven justices, all appointed by Democratic governor, said: ''An accurate vote count is one of the essential foundations of our democracy.'' The work of people, they said, is more just than machines.

The unanimous decision came as election workers in three counties continued their counting of 1.5 million ballots, now facing a Sunday deadline to complete the job with no clear guidance as to how to proceed. The fight will now be over thousands of ballots with so-called ''dimpled chads'' - those that are indented but not punched.

The Florida court called a 1990 Illinois Supreme Court decision that endorses the counting of partially punched chads ''particularly apt,'' saying voters should not lose their voice in the election ''simply because the chad they punched did not completely dislodge from the ballots.''

''We decline to rule more expansively,'' the court concluded, ''for to do so would result in this court substantially rewriting the code. We leave that matter to the sound discretion of the body best equipped to address it - the legislature.''

Democrats seized on that passage as evidence that county elections officials can use wide discretion to approve ballots.

''We all have a stake in the strength of our union and in that endeavor there can be no losers - no matter what the outcome,'' Gore said, quickly summoning TV cameras to bask in the glow of a partial victory.

Fellow Democrats welcomed the decision, but privately worried that Republicans would slow down the recount process to make it difficult for Gore to overtake Bush before the deadline.

Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III was expected to respond for Bush, who was in Texas when the ruling was handed down. Gore was at his residence in Washington and planned a statement.

In advance of the ruling, Republican lawyers prepared to take an emergency appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court in case the Florida court rules against them. After the ruling, a senior Bush adviser said all legal options are on the table and Bush's forces would continue to fight, both in the courts and the ballot-counting rooms.

One dispirited Bush adviser said he feared the ruling gave Gore all the ammunition he needed to creep ahead in the vote total.

Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Republican and Bush ally, who had refused to accept the hand counts, was not available for comment.

Clay Roberts, Republican-appointed director of state Division of Elections and a member of the state canvassing board, said, ''Certainly we will follow the orders of the Florida Supreme Court. Of course the Secretary of State is going to abide by the ruling on the highest court of the state.

''I haven't read their ruling so I don't know whether to be disappointed in it or not. It's really not our concern whether it's a victory for Al Gore or George Bush. The secretary of state was presented with a statute that had some conflict and she interpreted it to the best of her ability according to the law,'' he said.

In three Democratic-leaning counties, ballot counting continued past 11 p.m. EST.

''We'll be able to meet the deadline,'' Burton said as televisions in the West Palm Beach counting room showed the Supreme Court spokesman releasing the decision, but the audio was turned off. Workers continued to hand count the ballots.

Broward County officials said they would forge ahead with the counting, maybe even working on Thanksgiving to meet the new deadline.

The state's biggest county, Miami-Dade, got a late start and officials had said they would not be done until early December.

The justices said they were hesitant to rewrite the Florida Election Code on the issue of manual recounts and instead sought ''a fair and expeditious resolution'' of the immediate issue - a deadline for filing recounts.

Democrats want three county canvassing boards to count hundreds of punch-card ballots with no holes poked out for the presidential race, giving Gore or Bush a vote when an indentation is found next to their name. With the Texas Republican clinging to a 930-vote lead, the vice president's advisers said they almost certainly can't win Florida and the White House unless county officials discern the intent of voters whose ballots were not properly punched.

In Broward County, where up to 2,000 questionable ballots were set aside for review later, officials asked the Supreme Court to set a uniform standard for validating ballots.

Both sides acknowledged Tuesday that Gore stands to pick up hundreds of votes - perhaps as many as 1,500 with the most liberal approval standards. The three counties conducting recounts are predominantly Democratic, and voters from Gore's party historically cast more faulty ballots than their GOP counterparts.

''We think that we'll have enough votes,'' said David Boies, Gore's attorney.

Republicans want the manual recounts stopped and, if not, they fear a broad standard for reviewing the ballots will tilt the race to Gore. Bush's team has an ace in the hole: Hundreds of absentee ballots from military outposts that were rejected on technicalities.

A senior Bush adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in advance of the ruling that Republicans were likely to sue to reinstate rejected absentee ballots from military outposts if the Supreme Court allows recounts to go forward. Democrats waged a county-by-county campaign to toss out the absentee votes, a majority of which were Republican, but rolled back on their objections to the military ballots after coming under heavy criticism.

In recounting rooms across the southeast coast of Florida, the procedure varied little Tuesday: Gore ballots went in one pile; Bush ballots in another; questionable ballots, including some with dimples, in yet a third.

Officials on both sides said that absent a court ruling, the questionable ballots may yet settle the nation's presidential election - hundreds of cardboard punchcards, puzzled over by officials on three county canvassing boards.

While awaiting word on the fate of their recounts, local officials have set their own often-shifting standards.

In the state's largest county, Miami-Dade, election officials are following the guidance of Gore's allies and assigning votes whenever a voter's intent could be determined by an indentation on the ballot. With a small fraction of the precincts counted, both sides said Gore was on pace to pick up about 500 votes by the time counting ends, about Dec. 1.

A circuit judge rejected GOP requests to set standards in Miami-Dade for ballot review and search garbage cans for chads - scraps of paper that are dislodged when a ballot is punched. ''I'm not going to manage the minutiae of each ballot,'' Circuit Judge David Tobin said.

Tempers flared in the vote-counting rooms. Republican observer Grant Lally asked to have Ivy Korman, the administrator of the elections department, removed from the counting room.

''She's been hostile,'' he told elections supervisor Lawrence King. ''She snapped at me at lunch.''

''I have a one-hour lunch break. That was it,'' Korman replied. ''I ignored him and read my newspaper.''

Up the coast in Broward County, all ballots with dimpled chads or just one corner of the chad detached are set aside to be reviewed by the canvassing board after all the other ballots are counted.

Officials finished counting ballots that were not in dispute Tuesday night, and Gore had gained 118 votes on Bush. Senior Republicans and Democrats alike said Gore could net another 500 or so votes in Broward County alone if the dimpled ballots are allowed.

Circuit Judge Robert Rosenberg, a Republican with Democratic ties, was named to the three-person county elections board to replace Jane Carroll, who abruptly quit Monday.

Further up the coast, Palm Beach County is the key to Gore's recount drive. The vice president had picked up only a handful of votes with one-fifth of the precincts counted, not nearly enough to overtake Bush, according to senior Democrats. Officials there are not considering any ballots with dimpled chads or with chads detached at one corer.