UR TV CAST

“These chad marks didn’t get on the ballot by osmosis,” said Democratic attorney Charles Lichtman.Miami-Dade County began mechanically sorting ballots by machine in preparation for a hand count. Bush’s attorneys protested the action, saying it would alter the delicate ballots, but a circuit judge gave the go-ahead.There was conflict in the overseas count, too, as the Republicans charged Democrats with systematically challenging votes cast by members of the armed forces.Tempers flared as the count dragged on. A fracas broke out late Saturday night in Palm Beach when a counter accidentally put a ballot in the wrong stack.”You would have thought she’d killed 14 people,” County Judge Charles Burton said yesterday. He urged monitors from both political camps to make their points “in a nice way.”Clinton, wrapping up a trip to Vietnam, told CNN the nation doesn’t need “all this hand wringing” and added: “Everybody ought to just relax and let the process play out..

The fate of the US presidential election rests today with the five men and two women who constitute the Supreme Court of the State of Florida. The fate of the US presidential election rests today with the five men and two women who constitute the Supreme Court of the State of Florida.
Six were appointed by Democratic governors and the seventh – Peggy Quince, a black female lawyer – jointly by the late Democratic governor Lawton Chiles, and the Republican Governor, Jeb Bush, who had just won the governorship but not yet taken office.These judges will hear two hour-long submissions this afternoon, one from the Gore campaign, the other from the Bush campaign, arguing the legality of the manual recounts under way or about to start in three Florida counties.The Gore camp hopes, and the Bush camp fears, that these recounts will decide the election in Florida – and so the presidency – in Mr Gore’s favour. Florida’s 25 electoral votes are all either candidate needs to clinch the presidency.The fact that six of the seven judges were appointed under a Democratic governor would suggest a pro-Democrat disposition to the court. And its relations with Florida’s Governor and Republican-majority legislature have indeed been rocky.

Earlier this year, the court collided with the legislature head-on over a law intended to speed up judicial proceedings in death penalty cases, which had been strongly backed by Jeb Bush.Yet even some of Florida’s most senior Republicans say the court is fair. Tom Slade, a former chairman of the state Republican Party said: “They are an honourable group of very distinguished jurists and, given the potential impact of their opinion, they won’t be inclined to play politics.”Even Mr Bush sought to minimise his criticism. There had been a “little bit of tension” between himself and the court, he admitted two days ago, but he expressed confidence “they will do the right thing”.Democrats were equally wary of second-guessing the court. Steven Geller, a Florida Senator from Broward County – a county where the Democrat-requested recount is in progress – said: “You’d think that since they [the judges] were primarily appointed by Democrats, they would be a liberal court; you’d be wrong.” One reason for the cross-party respect stems from the appointment system. Florida’s Supreme Court judges are nominated by a non-party panel that submits three names to the governor, who appoints one for six years.The appointment must be, in effect, ratified by the voters. In the first election that takes place more than a year after the appointment they can decide whether to recall the judge or leave him or her in place.Although the court is not considered “liberal”, it did give a relatively liberal ruling in a 1998 case that hinged on arguments with similarities to the ones it will hear today.

In Beckstrom v Volusia County – which is, incidentally, the county that initially brought this case – the judges had to decide in what circumstances a manual recount could be permitted. Was it just in the event that the voting or counting machines proved faulty or fraud was suspected, or could it be invoked more widely?The court ruled that a “defective ballot” was one marked in such a way that it could not be read by machine, and it agreed such a ballot should be counted by hand to establish “the intent of the voters”. This pragmatic approach reversed a 23-year-old judgment that set out strictly technical conditions for a manual recount. Four of the current Supreme Court judges were on the court for that decision.Donald Weidner, the lawyer who argued that case, who is also a Bush supporter, tends to agree. “I think the Supreme Court will say count all of them and don’t worry about a few being late,” he said..

After 13 days of post-electoral wrangling, at least a dozen lawsuits, court hearings at county, state and federal level, one full mechanical recount and some half-started manual ones, the United States might at last beclose to knowing who its next president will be. But it is still too early to know who – or when his election will be formalised. After 13 days of post-electoral wrangling, at least a dozen lawsuits, court hearings at county, state and federal level, one full mechanical recount and some half-started manual ones, the United States might at last beclose to knowing who its next president will be. But it is still too early to know who – or when his election will be formalised.
Today, the troublesome race in Florida at last goes before the state supreme court, the body that advisers to both parties believe stands the best chance of sorting out the mess of claims and counter-claims about the validity of absentee ballot postmarks, hanging chads, manual recounts and the rest.Technically, the court could either stop the election immediately – barring all further vote calculations and declaring George W Bush the winner – or set a deadline and the rules for further recounts, which may or may not favour Al Gore.Politically, however, the matter may not be so simple, since an election of this importance requires more than just a winner to assume full validity. It also requires a loser willing to concede gracefully – and that still looks a distant prospect.Even Saturday’s count of overseas absentee ballots was mired in controversy, as the two sides argued about which ballots should count and which should not. Technically, an overseas ballot is legal if it is postmarked on or before election day. The Republicans, however, accused Democrat-controlled counties of wantonly throwing out hundreds of ballots received from foreign military posts that bore no postmark at all.