Election 2000: Miami-Dade Recount Begins
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Back now to the Florida recount story, as we have been covering it from the beginning. Let's go now to Miami. CNN's Charles Zewe is joining us now. He has got the latest on the on-again, off-again recount down there. Charles, good morning.</s>CHARLES ZEWE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning from Miami, Leon, where they are in the process of getting underway with the full manual recount of 653,000 ballots cast here on election day. Yesterday, in the run up to this manual recount, they sent all of the ballots through a manual sorting machine, mechanical sorting machines, to pull out so-called undervotes, approximately 10,750 punch card ballots of which there was no choice for president recorded on election day. The canvassing board here will take a look at each one of those ballots and decide whether they can determine who, if anybody, the voters wanted to vote for. Now there is some controversy here. Republicans have been fighting this hand count all along, saying it is damaging the ballots. They cite thousands of chads that were knocked off the ballots by the sorting machines yesterday. They tried to get a judge yesterday to block the process. They are telling me, at this hour, they are going to go back into the same courthouse today and try to get another judge to hold a full hearing on whether the manual recount is unfair and illegal, and should be stopped. There is a little twist to their argument this morning. They are saying that the Miami-Dade canvassing board, which originally voted against a manual recount, after checking only three precincts and only coming up with six votes for Al Gore in that check, that once the canvassing board decided against a full recount that they could not go back on that decision. Last week, they reversed themselves, decided to go ahead with a full manual recount. Republicans saying this morning that they did not have the legal authority to do that. One additional point, U.S. Senator Bob Graham, a Democrat, is now calling for a full recount of all of Florida's 67 counties. He is saying that is the only fair way to resolve this election -- Leon.</s>HARRIS: And we may find out later on this afternoon if the state supreme court agrees with Mr. Graham on that particular point. But let me ask you quickly, if you can give us an idea of the numbers, do you know how many under counted ballots there are there that did not have any presidential choice on it?</s>ZEWE: They estimate, Leon, about 10,750. How they came up with that exact number, that is the estimate of David Leahy (ph), who has been at this about 26, 27 years here, as an election supervisor in Miami. He is really an expert in this. That is his estimate. Democrats, by the way, originally estimated that on a manual recount here they could pick up about 300 votes. Now they are saying -- Joseph Geller (ph), who is a Democratic Party chairman here in Miami-Dade, told me yesterday he estimates that based on those 10,750 undervotes that Al Gore, he thinks, could get 500 new votes.</s>HARRIS: Well, we shall see. That all remains to be seen in the counting. Charles Zewe, reporting live this morning, thank you much.