What Does America Think of the Florida Recount?
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, we're still going. Ten-thirty Eastern time. Welcome back to CNN SUNDAY MORNING, a special edition of which. I'm Miles O'Brien.</s>KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Kyra Phillips. We're going to begin this half hour with an update of, of course, our top story. It's been nearly two weeks since the presidential election, and there's still no winner. But is the finish line near? Here are the latest developments. Lawyers for George W. Bush faces a noon deadline to file briefs with Florida's Supreme Court outlining their objections to hand recounts being used in a final vote tally. Now the court hears oral arguments from both sides tomorrow. Also today, a judge in Miami rejected a Republican request to keep ballots from being mechanically sorted in Miami-Dade County before hand recounts begin tomorrow. Hand counts are under way in Palm Beach and Broward Counties, and right now, with all overseas absentee ballots counted, Bush unofficially has increased his Florida lead over Al Gore by 930 votes. But that could change if hand recounts are included in Florida's final vote tally. That's why lawyers for Bush and Gore are heading to Florida's Supreme Court tomorrow. They'll lay out arguments for and against the hand recount. CNN's Deborah Feyerick has more on that.</s>DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: With the overseas absentee ballots counted, George W. Bush had inched closer to the finish line. While those votes triples Governor Bush's lead to just over 900, it remains a razor-thin margin. Still, both sides are holding their breath as Florida's highest court gets ready to hear arguments on whether new hand recounts should be included in the final total. Lawyers for the Gore campaign filed their brief shortly before Saturday's 2:00 deadline. In it, they argue Secretary of State Katherine Harris, in their words, used the wrong legal standard in ignoring manual recounts. And that her refusal to accept recounts was an abuse of discretion. The Bush team must respond by noon Sunday. In a lower court this week, their attorneys argued the State's top election official was following Florida law in upholding Tuesday's deadline, and that she was right to disregard new tallies. The Gore and Bush campaigns will face the judges Monday, each side having exactly one hour to lay out their case. And with all the facts before them, the judges will decide whether the new vote tallies will count -- a ruling that will affect the impact of the presidential election. Deborah Feyerick, CNN, Tallahassee.</s>O'BRIEN: All right. It is the moment we have been waiting for. We are joined by a pair of people who are going to be taking some questions and commenting on some of your comments. Screen left -- Mark Hollis with the "South Florida Sun-Sentinel." Screen right -- our Bill Hemmer, point person in Tallahassee for us all throughout the Florida recount. Gentlemen, thanks for being with us.</s>MARK HOLLIS, "SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL": Glad to be here.</s>BILL HEMMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's my pleasure.</s>O'BRIEN: All right. Let's get right to it.</s>HEMMER: All right.</s>O'BRIEN: We have -- let's get right to this. And this is a good one, I think, to bring Mark into the picture, here, because he's so familiar with the turf down there. This e-mail comes from a person with the handle of t-o-super (ph). And referring to the Secretary of State in Florida, Katherine Harris, he says or she says, "Harris abused her power by not recusing herself." Mark, I'm just curious. You know, this is a person who, depending on your point of view, is either a heroine of high proportion or a villain.</s>HOLLIS: That's -- that's absolutely right that the two sides see her in starkly different views. But the fact of the matter -- she can't hardly recuse herself. She remains the State's top elections official. She is not a part of that three-member canvassing board that the governor was a part of. He was able to recuse himself, as he did.</s>O'BRIEN: Oh, really? It wasn't even an option for her to say, "I'm sorry. I was the chairman of the Bush campaign. I don't feel comfortable." There was nothing in the law that allowed that to happen?</s>HOLLIS: Well, I -- I don't think the letter of the law would apply here as much as she is -- she will remain the elected official. And there is an argument to be made if she doesn't act in a fair and reasonable fashion, the voters can take her out.</s>PHILLIPS: All right. Here comes another e-mail. This one is from Kevin (ph) in Virginia. "How much has the vote changed up to now with the hand recounts? And do you feel that there will be enough to overcome Bush's lead? And is it really fair? We've heard that a lot -- or, we've heard that word a lot in the past week. What is really fair?" Gentlemen?</s>HEMMER: I guess it depends on who you ask</s>HEMMER: You are right. These numbers aren't sorted yet. It's a little early to make those sorts of predictions.</s>O'BRIEN: All right. Let's bring another one of our sage and earnest reporters into the conversation. Mr. John Zarrella, our Miami bureau chief who's been stationed in West Palm Beach for the past six years, it seems. John, this one comes from a gentleman who identifies himself as a military man. "How do you feel about the high number of overseas ballots that were tossed out in the Democratic counties? By reports that I have seen, it has been as high as 100 percent and -- or than in other -- counties." His syntax was a little off there. The point is -- and in particular, which comes up again and again, John -- is the issue of military votes and why those were disqualified disproportionately.</s>JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, the issue there had been -- and in Palm Beach County, we saw it here, as well -- that some of the military votes were coming back without a postmark on them or with postmarks that were -- you couldn't read them. They were just -- didn't know where they were from. And some of the overseas ballots were coming back without signatures on them. And the argument was, well, some of -- you know, you don't have the postman on the ship to postmark these. And when they go back to the military bases, shouldn't they -- and then are sent into the counties -- shouldn't they be counted? So, there has been a great deal of disagreement on that. But the ones that have been disqualified, to our understanding in Palm Beach County, was they didn't have a postmark and they weren't signed, either. So that's been the issue. But a large number of them were disqualified. The Democrats say, "Well, you know what? A lot of military votes have been disqualified, but a lot of other votes are being disqualified, too." So, you know, the argument continues on both sides. It's tit for tat and point-counterpoint.</s>PHILLIPS: All right. Gentlemen, not necessarily a question, but a comment from Debbie in West Virginia. Go ahead, Debbie.</s>DEBBIE: Yes. I wanted to ask a question. If the Democrats feel that it's fair and accurate for these manual recounts to happen in Florida, and if they're accepted as part of the total -- the final tally, then doesn't that give me and the citizens across this country to file suit that our votes were not fair and accurately counted?</s>PHILLIPS: OK. She did have a question. Mark, do you want to respond to that? Or ...</s>HOLLIS: Well, I think unless there was a specific charge of a count not being registered where she lives -- I'm not sure I follow her point.</s>PHILLIPS: OK. John? Bill?</s>HEMMER: Yeah, I think the issue, too, is that in many of the states where it wasn't "too close to call" -- and that's part of the issue down here, as well, that it was one-half of one percent that led to the original machine recount. And then the issues that developed in Palm Beach County, which, of course, are the center of the court controversy. But unless it was too close to call, I'm not sure that there is an argument there that your vote didn't count.</s>PHILLIPS: All right. Miles, you have another e-mail?</s>O'BRIEN: All right. Let's go back to the e-mail. This one comes from north of the border in Canada from a Mr. or Mrs. T. Zinetti (ph). "I wonder if you realize how silly you appear to the world for a country that touts itself as the model of democracy for the free world, we see that people really have no input. Pretending they do is an insult to the citizens of your country." And I'm curious, Mark, in your reporting, if you feel -- if you run into a lot of voters who feel as if they've been disenfranchised particularly in Florida.</s>HOLLIS: Well, yeah. Certainly, I mean, as we talk to voters in south Florida, many of them do feel disenfranchised, but as many people feel embarrassed by this entire matter that our state, our region of the world is on the international map in a big way. And not everyone's looking for that kind of</s>HEMMER: I had a student from Florida State come up to me the other day right here and he was from Liberia in western Africa. And he came over and he said, "Mr. Hemmer, I watch you on television. I have a question for you." He said, "My friends e-mail me every day from western African nations wondering what's going on in the United States. What should I tell them?" I think ultimately when this is over, when it's all said and done, I think we will have a truer definition of the meaning for the word democracy. And I -- and I -- and, again, I wonder what the fallout is. And I don't think we're going to truly know it for another four years time as to whether or not more people will vote in 2004 or if more people will be turned off. I think it's going to be an interesting thing to follow for the next four years.</s>O'BRIEN: All right. Gentlemen, why don't you sit tight for a minute? I just want to leave it as we go to break -- we'll be back with them in just a moment -- but this is an interesting counterpoint to what we heard from Canada. This comes from David St. Mars (ph). "After this bloodbath, what then? Well, even the most biblical of doomsayers warns that it's possible that nothing will happen. Yeah. I want my guy to win. I want it bad. But even if I lose today, I will wake up tomorrow in the greatest country in the history of this planet." So let's take a break. We'll be back with more in just a moment.</s>PHILLIPS: Continuing to take e-mails and calls.</s>O'BRIEN: We have a panel of reporters. Mark Hollis is with the "South Florida Sun-Sentinel." Bill Hemmer, John Zarrella with the Cable News Network.</s>PHILLIPS: All right, guys. This is bashing, I guess, reporters a little bit. Susan from Franklin, Tennessee, asks this question. All three of you will probably want to respond: "I saw one reporter say that he had been carrying a voting ballot in his pocket for a week and trying to knock the chad out unsuccessfully. Where are the other reporters? Why don't reporters dig deep to reveal the truth of the manipulations that both the Democrats and Republicans are attempting? Do your jobs."</s>O'BRIEN: You have been taken to task, gentlemen.</s>PHILLIPS: Oh, boy.</s>HEMMER: I guess we say we're trying ...</s>HEMMER: ... and if it's not satisfactory, then, our regrets. But we'll keep on pushing through on that one.</s>HOLLIS: There are more reporters than you can imagine covering this story, so I think we are digging real hard.</s>PHILLIPS: John?</s>ZARRELLA: Yeah. I would say that, you know, everything is in full view here. We're in the satellite truck that we have producer Michael Carey (ph) is in there. He's watching constantly the process. We have -- there's three pool cameras inside the emergency operations center. You can see them. We're putting it on the air for you there. You can see the process going on. All this alleged shenanigans that's been talked about. You know, unless Michael's asleep in the truck, it's not getting by him or any of the rest of us.</s>HEMMER: And just to follow that up, John. Viewers are going to get a fascinating opportunity tomorrow at 2:00 live on CNN to hear these oral arguments in the State Supreme Court. It's rather unusual to have that kind of camera access inside.</s>O'BRIEN: All right ...</s>HOLLIS: Not so much in ...</s>O'BRIEN: I'm sorry. Go ahead. Do you have anything else?</s>HOLLIS: Well, I would say not so much in Florida. Florida we have a wonderful sunshine law that allows a lot of open access to government. I'm glad the international audience is getting this chance to see how open Florida government can be when it works best.</s>HEMMER: Do you think we made enough excuses for our viewer right now?</s>O'BRIEN: I think that was a very successful filibuster, gentlemen. Let's move on to John Miller in Williamsport, Maryland. "Are there other areas that can be disputed or does Florida end it?" You can almost hear the relief as he tries to type that question. Florida is it, right?</s>ZARRELLA: Florida's it. That's it -- Florida -- because that was the too-close-to-call, half-percent, you know. There are other states that were close, but not close enough for recount. So quite clearly, Florida's it. And you know, we've all been saying down here, it could be a lot worse. This could have happened someplace like Montana where it's awfully chilly. At least it's nice and warm for the most part down here.</s>HOLLIS: Hey, speak for yourself, Zarrella. It's freezing in Tallahassee.</s>O'BRIEN: All right, gentlemen. Thanks very much. We're learning all about Florida -- north and south, its climate, its people, its voting habits. You name it -- we know about it now. We appreciate you taking those questions. And, once again, I just can't express my appreciation to all of you for sending in all your comments. I'm sorry we can't get to even a small fraction of them.</s>PHILLIPS: And I can tell you right now -- our producers are not sleeping. That is for sure.</s>O'BRIEN: That is for sure.</s>PHILLIPS: Well, throughout the recount in Florida, there have been questions about two of the state's most prominent Republicans. We're going to talk about that. Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris coming up after this break.</s>O'BRIEN: As we continue our discussion