Election 2000: Florida State Supreme Court Ready to Consider Recounts, Even as Recounts Continue
JOIE CHEN, CNN ANCHOR: And here's where we stand on the presidential race in Florida almost two full weeks now after the election: The state supreme court is about to hear arguments both for and against allowing recounts after Florida's statutory deadline for certifying elections. The hearing begins about 38 minutes from now. You can see it here, live here on CNN. Recounts continue in three Florida counties -- Broward, Palm Beach and Dade -- but as far as we can tell, Al Gore has not gained a whole lot of ground against George W. Bush. Bush's official, uncertified lead, which does not count the unfinished hand-counts, stands now at 930 votes, and a judge in West Palm Beach today decided that there is no legal basis to let Palm Beach county hold a new election. At issue, there was the so-called "butterfly ballot," which Democrats claim cost Gore thousands of votes. The plaintiffs do plan to appeal.</s>NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR: Joie mentioned that the hand count continues in Broward county as well, a heavily Democratic county. Let's get the latest from there from our Susan Candiotti, who's watching it -- Susan.</s>SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good afternoon, Natalie. With nearly 79 percent of the precincts completed, Vice President Al Gore now has a net gain of 114 votes. The board here remains hopeful that it can meet its self-imposed deadline of trying to wrap things up by 5:00. But even after the board completes all 609 precincts, it won't be done: It then must examine all those so-called dimpled ballots, or those with one corner of the chad hanging, to try to determine the voter's intent. That's because, on Sunday, the canvassing board reversed itself deciding to consider those ballots after the Republican attorney that represents this Democratically controlled board advised that the board should broaden its standards; otherwise, it probably couldn't withstand a legal challenge. Republicans continue to call all of this an outrage. Democrats argue it's the only fair thing to do. Now, this morning, the Republican Party of Florida and Broward county filed a motion asking a Broward judge to recuse himself, the very same judge who earlier last week said that the board could continue this hand count and also said that this board should broaden the standard that it's been using to try to decide the voter's intent. So far we don't know what the judge has done with that motion, but we'll bring you up to date when we do learn that. Finally, in about a half an hour from now, when the Florida supreme court convenes to hear oral arguments, this canvassing board will take a lunch recess so that they can watch at least part of those arguments. That's it from here, Natalie. Back to you in Atlanta.</s>ALLEN: And Susan, you talk about these questionable ballots -- how many are we talking about?</s>CANDIOTTI: The canvassing board estimates that there are several hundred of them. An attorney representing the board said, however, that in his view, maybe only about 100 of them might be problematic. But if, indeed, the Florida supreme court agrees that this hand recount should continue, and that the board can consider those so- called dimpled ballots, then that attorney estimated that they probably wouldn't be able to finish the recount until sometime after Thanksgiving, and he also thought there wouldn't be as much of a deadline to try to hurry things up if the supreme court gave the go ahead.</s>ALLEN: All right, and as you said, they'll all take a break and be watching the arguments in Tallahassee. Thanks, Susan Candiotti.</s>CHEN: And watching all the developments in Florida, at least at a distance, the Texas governor went back to work today in Austin, and the vice president called home via satellite. CNN's Jeanne Meserve is in Texas for us, Chris Black for us in Washington. We want to hear from both of you. First, though to Jeanne.</s>JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Joie, this is a pivotal day in determining whether George W. Bush goes to the White House, but he spent a good part of the day at the statehouse. As he bounded up the steps this morning, he told reporters he was "doing great, thank you." We're told he met with top aids, state aids that is, to conduct some gubernatorial business and that he'll go to workout a little later, before monitoring developments down in the Florida supreme court. Campaign headquarters described this afternoon as eerie and quiet. One aid is telling me things are in a state of suspended animation until the court proceedings begin. The governor is described as upbeat and fired up. The campaign remains hopeful, of course, that the supreme court will affirm a lower court ruling which said that Secretary of State Katherine Harris was acting within her rights when she decided to exclude hand-counted ballots from Florida's final state tallies. But of course, no one knows exactly what the court will rule, or when, or whether it will be in the Bush campaign's favor, the campaign, at this point, refusing to speculate on next steps until it knows exactly what the court rules -- Joie.</s>CHEN: Jeanne, is there any indication how closely the governor himself is watching all this?</s>MESERVE: They say he is monitoring developments, and they don't give us too much more information than that. We do know there have been a number of conference calls through the proceeding weeks with his officials down in Florida. Also while he was out on his ranch in Crawford, he certainly was keeping close touch with aides here in Austin. I would bet, given the importance of this situation, he's monitoring pretty darn closely, but we don't get very many details on that -- Joie.</s>CHEN: Jeanne Meserve for us, in Austin, Texas -- Natalie.</s>ALLEN: And now Al Gore, who today spoke for the nation, perhaps, when he said, and we quote, "I assumed by November 20th, the election would be over with." CNN's Chris Black covering the Gore campaign, and Chris, Jeanne mentioned the governor having time to workout. I know the vice president has, too. I think they're the only two people in this saga that have time to workout during all of it. What can you tell us about Al Gore today?</s>CHRIS BLACK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's true, Natalie, there's not much that Al Gore can do right now but sit back and watch the arguments being presented to the supreme court of Florida just like the rest of the country. He canceled a trip to Tennessee this weekend to make an appearance before an annual families' issues conference, so he could stay here and monitor the developments. But this morning, he spoke to the gathering by satellite.</s>VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We decided to move this one out of the heat of the election to late November so we could be sure that it was well after the conclusion of the election. And you know, I just assumed that by November 20th, the election would be over with but I guess not.</s>BLACK: Gore's attorneys say they're quite confident the court will uphold the validity of the recounts. The big question for Gore, however, is whether the court agrees to set a uniform standard of voter intent for judging those ballots. Now, this is critically important, perhaps the most important part of the proceeding. Gore campaign officials say if the dimpled ballots can be counted, Al Gore has a very good chance of being the next president of the United States. This is a standard that's spelled out in a Texas law that Governor Bush actually signed three years ago and is a standard used in many states -- Natalie.</s>ALLEN: Do they expect if the justices go their way and allow the hand recounts that the justices will be specific, have any lawyers said anything about whether they think that they'll help them out there?</s>BLACK: They really don't know. They actually -- they think this court will be -- will be aggressive about it and will address the point, but there is a real question as to whether the court will even address this point. But it is very important for Gore campaign.</s>ALLEN: Chris Black in Washington, thanks, Chris.