Election officials, facing a Monday deadline, were racing yesterday to hand count disputed Florida ballots that may decide the US presidential election, as Republicans sought a way to reverse a Florida Supreme Court ruling ordering the inclusion of the recounted votes.
The state's highest court said on Tuesday that manual recounts should be added to the final tally of the Nov. 7 election until Monday at the latest -- giving Democrat Al Gore a final shot at the White House and drawing cries of foul from Republicans.
Gore quickly hailed the ruling as a victory for democracy and again urged his Republican rival George W. Bush to agree to a one-on-one meeting while the fate of Florida's 25 electoral votes -- and the presidency -- was being decided.
Bush has a 930-vote lead in Florida after machine counts of the 6 million ballots cast in the state in the election two weeks ago, and Katherine Harris, the Republican secretary of state in Florida, had wanted to certify him as victor on Nov. 18.
The Supreme Court blocked that plan pending its consideration of the case this week.
Tuesday's ruling by the court -- six of whose seven justices were appointed by Democrats, and the seventh a joint Democratic-Republican appointee -- paved the way for results to be accepted from manual recounts of 1.7 million votes from three heavily pro-Gore counties.
That is a process the Gore campaign hopes could give the vice president victory in Florida, and by extension the White House.
For the first time, Gore also suggested that he and the Texas governor move toward creating new administrations.
But Bush lieutenant James Baker, a former secretary of state, attacked the court decision as "unfair and unacceptable" and promised the Republican campaign would study "whatever remedies" were available to reverse the ruling.
Gore's camp predicted Miami-Dade County, Florida's most populous, would meet the court's Monday deadline to finish its hand recount of 654,000 ballots, despite earlier warnings from county officials that the recount could take until Dec. 1.
Broward County had all but finished counting on Tuesday night, and Palm Beach County said it could meet the deadline.
Meanwhile, Republican running mate Dick Cheney was admitted to a George Washington University hospital suffering from chest pains. A spokeswoman for the Bush campaign, Karen Hughes, said Cheney was resting comfortably and the tests had shown nothing abnormal.
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