-Caveat Lector-
Fla. Ballots on Hold Pending Supreme Court Hearing
Updated 2:34 PM ET December 10, 2000
By James Pierpoint
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (Reuters) - Ballots from Florida's presidential
election were back under lock and key on Sunday as elections
officials took a U.S. Supreme Court-ordered break from a manual
recount of votes that is Democrat Al Gore's best chance of
winning the pivotal state.
But elections officials, along with a legion of attorneys and
party operatives that descended on Tallahassee to contest the
Florida election, spent the day aware they might have to move
quickly following the next legal turn in a protracted battle for
the state's 25 Electoral College votes that hold the key to the
White House.
The Gore campaign has sought to overtake Republican George W.
Bush's wafer-thin lead in the state, pinning its hopes on hand
recounts of ballots that could yield enough votes to give him
victory.
A recount of an estimated 40,000 ``undervotes'' from the Nov. 7
election -- where machine counts showed no presidential vote but
hand reviews could reveal voter intent -- was ordered by the
Florida Supreme Court on Friday.
But hours after the laborious process started on Saturday, it was
halted by the U.S. Supreme Court, which scheduled a hearing on
Monday on the Bush campaign's appeal against the Florida Supreme
Court's ruling.
Florida Supreme Court spokesman Craig Waters said on Sunday that
the court sent papers related to the case up to the nation's
highest court by plane on Sunday morning. But referring to a
media report that some Florida ballots were also sent to
Washington, Waters said no court had ordered such a transfer and
no ballots had been moved.
When recount work stopped in Florida on Saturday afternoon,
elections supervisors in some counties were still working to
segregate undervotes from stacks of thousands of other ballots
cast in the election.
Although no official tallies were released under orders from Leon
County Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis, who was directing the
recount, unofficial results indicated that Gore was making up
little ground in his bid to overtake Bush's slim lead.
UNOFFICIAL REPORTS SHOWED SLIM PICKINGS FOR GORE
According to media reports, Gore had picked up a net 13 votes in
a dozen counties where recounting was actually underway. But a
Republican Party operative told reporters Bush had a net gain of
42 votes in a recount of Miami-Dade County ballots being
conducted in Tallahassee, giving him a net gain of 29 votes
statewide in the partial recount.
Eight judges, working in teams of two, went through about one
third of the 9,000 undervotes from Miami-Dade before the recount
was halted.
If nothing else, that partial recount seemed to show that rather
than not voting clearly, thousands of voters simply did not make
a choice for president in the election.
Of the 3,515 votes Republican observer Barry Jackson said were
tallied, only 279 were counted as votes for either candidate or
set aside to be ruled on by Lewis. That left 3,236 ballots on
which no presidential vote was recorded.
In most Florida counties where recounts were ordered, undervotes
were still being segregated from thousands of other ballots when
the order was handed down to halt the process.
``We're ready to resume Monday if need be,'' Brevard County
elections supervisor Fred Galey told the Orlando Sentinel.
In Jacksonville, where undervotes had been segregated but a
recount had not yet begun, Bush was expected to pick up votes
because about seven in ten of the undervoted ballots came from
precincts he had won on Nov. 7, the Florida Times-Union reported.
The Orlando Sentinel, based in part on an unofficial survey of
counties by the Associated Press, reported that Gore had picked
up a net 16 votes in 11 counties where results were available,
including five counties where recounts were completed before they
were ordered halted.
In some counties, like Liberty, which had 29 undervotes to count,
and Gulf, which had 48, the recounts were completed quickly.
But officials in Hillsborough, with more than 5,500 undervotes,
Duval, with about 5,000, and Pinellas, with about 4,000,
elections workers spent most of Saturday segregating out
undervotes votes and preparing for recounts.
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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