Florida Supreme Court Will Consider Recount

The state Supreme Court announced it would meet at 10 a.m. Thursday to hear from lawyers for Bush and Gore. The court asked for briefs by noon Wednesday on whether it has jurisdiction in the case and, if so, what it should decide.

• On a related issue, the court worked to respond to Monday's order from the U.S. Supreme Court, which vacated an earlier order by the justices extending the presidential vote certification deadline to include manual recounts, and asked for clarification. The state justices asked for briefs by 3 p.m. Tuesday and will decide after that how to resolve the issue, court spokesman Craig Waters said.

• Separately, a federal appeals court in Atlanta Tuesday considered legal issues surrounding the manual recount.

Bush lawyer Ted Olson argued that recounts of ballots in two Democrat-ruled Florida counties were unconstitutional because they are unfair to other voters. The Bush campaign is appealing decisions by federal judges in Miami and Orlando, who declined to stop the recounts.

Justices questioned Olson about whether the case was now moot because Bush has a certified 537-vote win in Florida, but Olson said the matter was still being contested in Florida courts and a federal ruling remained important.

• Meanwhile, vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman said Tuesday that he was confident Gore had support of Democrat leaders as the contest reached the Florida Supreme Court.

"We have always said that the final arbiter would be the Florida Supreme Court. This is who we took our substantive argument to," said Lieberman, who was on Capitol Hill to gauge the sentiment of fellow Democrats.

Both houses of Congress were returning for a lame-duck session, and while congressional Democrat leaders reaffirmed their support Tuesday for Gore's appeal, there was growing concern that pressure could build quickly on Democrat members for Gore to concede.

• Bush worked on transition planning and state business in Austin, Texas. He stopped briefly to hail the decision denying recounts in Florida circuit court.

• Republican vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney, a former congressman, traveled to Capitol Hill Tuesday to discuss transition planning, meeting with Republican leaders, including Rep. J.C. Watts, who Monday called on Gore to concede.

But Tuesday was mainly a day for measuring fallout from Monday's two rulings, both of which had the effect of putting the election outcome squarely before the Florida Supreme Court, which the Gore team has said will be its last battleground in its refusal to concede four weeks past Election Day.

The state Supreme Court is considered a friendly venue to Gore. Last month, it overturned a ruling by Leon Circuit Judge Terry Lewis, who ruled that Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris acted within her discretion when she refused to factor in hand counts in the state's machine-counted final tally.

On the other hand, the court last week declined to order a revote in Palm Beach County because of Democrat claims of confusion caused by the Democrat-designed "butterfly ballot." And it declined a Gore request to intervene and order a speeded-up schedule for a possible recount.

In the current case, Gore lawyers will argue before the Florida Supreme Court that Circuit Judge N. Sanford Sauls made his "factual" decision Monday to deny recounts without examining any of the evidence that he had admitted into trial – specifically, the thousands of paper ballots that Democrats claim will show Gore is the winner of the Florida race.

Sauls ruled in essence that there must be proof that the outcome of an election would be changed, if the ballots were hand counted, before any examination of those ballots can occur.

• Meanwhile, another state judge in Leon County is getting ready to hear a case brought by a Democrat activist challenging approximately 15,000 absentee votes in Seminole County.

The lawsuit complains that Republican operatives were allowed to write in voter identification numbers on absentee ballot applications for GOP-registered voters, which is against state law. (Democratic ballot applications had voter ID numbers printed on them and therefore were not altered.)

If the Democrat activist is successful, the decision could legally erase several thousand Bush votes, more than enough to wipe away either the 930-vote lead of Nov. 14 or the 537-vote lead of Nov. 26.

Whatever the outcome in the Seminole dispute – the presiding judge has refused a Bush demand to recuse herself – the losing side will appeal it to the Florida Supreme Court.

• In another venue, the Florida Legislature has said it might hold a special session to award the state's electors to Bush. But that appears to be on hold pending a clearer picture of whether Bush will need any help.

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