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Hand-to-hand combat: Election struggle goes ballot by ballot

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November 14, 2000 

DELAND, Florida (AP) - Republicans and Democrats battled county by county, ballot by ballot, over further recounts in Florida's presidential election. Each new round of counting changed vote totals by dribs and drabs.

On Monday, already-exhausted election workers faced a hand count of thousands of ballots in Volusia, Broward and Palm Beach counties. Another county, Osceola, was considering a similar count.

The stakes were high, but the new numbers were low.

After a full day of hand counting in 58 of Volusia County's 172 precincts, officials announced late Sunday that Republican George W. Bush had picked up a net gain of 33 votes. Palm Beach County awarded Democrat Al Gore a net gain of 39 votes after a weekend recount. Polk County was expected to give Bush a net gain of 97 votes on Monday following a ballot re-scan.

"When will it end? This will go on forever," said Mel Martinez, co-chairman of Bush's Florida campaign.

The fight was moving from the ballot box to the courtroom Monday, with a federal judge in Miami hearing arguments on a request by Republicans to halt hand counting, a method they say invites fraud. Democrats maintain that machine counting is so flawed that many legitimate votes have gone unrecorded.

A state judge in Palm Beach County plans to consider one of six lawsuits filed by voters who complain that a two-sided "butterfly ballot" was confusing and led them to mistakenly cast votes for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan instead of Gore.

With Florida's 25 electoral votes still up for grabs, and key to deciding the next president, Republicans and Democrats fought over where there should be further recounts and how they should be conducted.

Among developments:

-Broward County plans to begin a hand recount of about 6,000 ballots in three precincts. If major problems are found, authorities will consider a full hand count of all precincts in the Democratic stronghold.

-Volusia County resumes its full hand recount of 184,019 ballots.

-Palm Beach County election officials meet to discuss the full hand recount they have ordered of all 425,000 ballots cast. A hand count in four precincts produced a net gain of 39 votes for Gore over the weekend.

-Democrats added Osceola County to their list of hand recount requests. The Osceola canvassing board, composed of two Republicans and one Democrat, meets to weigh it. Gore had a small lead over Bush in the 54,000-plus votes cast. Hispanic voters alleged they were required to produce two forms of identification when only one was required. The central Florida county has a large Puerto Rican community.

An unofficial Associated Press canvass of the presidential vote in Florida showed Bush now has a 288-vote lead. The totals from the AP canvass were Bush 2,910,195, Gore 2,909,907. Those numbers reflect the latest figures from Palm Beach County.

On Friday, Secretary of State Katherine Harris said Bush had 2,910,074 votes to Gore's 2,909,114, a difference of 960, with one county still to be recounted - Palm Beach, where the AP showed a big gain for Gore.

The state has been unable to include updated Palm Beach County figures in its tally because a state judge issued an injunction Thursday in response to lawsuits by voters claiming they were confused over the ballot design.

A deadline loomed over the hand counts in Florida counties. Certified vote totals from each county need to be received by the secretary of state's office by 5 p.m. Tuesday for them to be counted.

To avoid having its votes not counted, Volusia County's canvassing board planned to seek a court order to extend the deadline. Republicans opposed the move.

The only major problem in Volusia was found in a precinct where the hand count turned up 320 ballots not previously recorded. Election officials explained that a ballot machine had inadvertently been reset on Election Day, erasing the votes from the machine's memory.