Democrat Al Gore planned to address the nation yesterday to explain why he was contesting Florida's certification that Republican George W. Bush had won the decisive state in the US presidential election.
Hoping to convince Americans the election is a fait accompli, Bush pressed ahead yesterday with plans for a transition after appealing to Gore to drop his legal challenges. "The votes are counted, it is time for the votes to count," he said on Sunday.
Vice President Gore was to take his public relations battle directly to the people in a speech that senior aides said will call for "a full and fair accounting of the vote" in Florida that he believes would make him the 43rd president.
PHOTO: AFP
His lawyers were also preparing yesterday to challenge election returns in at least three Florida counties, arguing that more than 10,000 votes were not tallied despite two statewide machine recounts and one hand recount in some counties.
Gore's legal counsel, David Boies, said that "an election's not over until the votes have been counted. And you have nine or ten thousand votes that have never been counted once."
Boies, speaking on CNN, also said: "It's important that this election be decided by the courts and not by a partisan secretary of state [Florida's Katherine Harris] who was one of the candidates' campaign manager and who's made every single decision that she was able to make to favor one candidate [Bush]. This is an election that's too important for the American people to decide other than in the impartial forum of the courts."
PHOTO: AFP
Expected to take at least several days to play out the fresh move adds to the legal wrangling that has already landed the disputed election in the US Supreme Court. The nation's highest court has set Friday to hear arguments on a Bush challenge to the manual recounting of votes in Florida.
For 20 days since one of the closest US presidential elections, the two camps have bitterly disputed the result in Florida, the state whose 25 Electoral College votes are enough to lift either man to the 270 total needed to enter the White House.
Bush has named Dick Cheney, his vice presidential running mate, to head his transition team and Andrew Card to be his chief of staff, and asked Cheney to start working with the Clinton administration to get the transition underway.
But Beth Newburger of the General Services Administration told CBS News the agency could not authorize transition funds and offices for Bush since "there is not an apparent winner and the outcome is unclear."
Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Gore's vice presidential running mate, decried Florida's final vote count from the Nov. 7 election as "incomplete and inaccurate" and said he and Gore had "no choice" but to contest it.
Even before the vote was certified, Gore told The New York Times, "It is important for the integrity of our democracy to make sure that every vote is counted."
In an interview that was published on the newspaper's Web site, Gore said no Democrat had told him he should drop his efforts, and some prominent Republicans, whom he would not name, had even encouraged him to fight on.
Gore's national address planned for yesterday, along with his interview with the Times, is part of his campaign for public support in his seemingly uphill battle to win the White House.
In a brief ceremony in Florida's state capitol on Sunday, Harris, a Republican and Bush supporter, and the two other members of the state canvassing commission signed returns declaring that Bush had defeated Gore by 537 votes -- out of some 6 million votes cast in the state.
Certification of the Florida result dealt a serious political and psychological blow to Gore, for the first time setting an official seal on Bush's apparent victory.
And political analysts agreed that while the certification did not represent a final settlement, it gave Bush a considerable public relations boost by buttressing his frequently stated claim to victory.
The exact results in Florida were 2,912,790 votes for Bush and 2,912,253 for Gore.
Bush insisted it was time now to move forward in preparing for a new presidency, and said if Gore continued the legal wrangling, he would be "filing a contest to the outcome of the election and that is not the best route for America."
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott implored Gore to concede the election "for the good of the country," while Bush adviser James Baker underscored the need for "closure."
Still, aides to the vice president argue for continuing their challenge, claiming the Gore-Lieberman ticket would easily make up the difference if uncounted votes, a large number of them in Democratic strongholds, were tallied.
Gore attorneys said they will contest results in Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Nassau counties, with a filing planned yesterday in Leon County Circuit Court in Tallahassee.
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
RESTAURANT POISONING? Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang at a press conference last night said this was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan An autopsy discovered bongkrekic acid in a specimen collected from a person who died from food poisoning after dining at the Malaysian restaurant chain Polam Kopitiam, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said at a news conference last night. It was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝) said. The testing conducted by forensic specialists at National Taiwan University was facilitated after a hospital voluntarily offered standard samples it had in stock that are required to test for bongkrekic acid, he said. Wang told the news conference that testing would continue despite
‘CARRIER KILLERS’: The Tuo Chiang-class corvettes’ stealth capability means they have a radar cross-section as small as the size of a fishing boat, an analyst said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday presided over a ceremony at Yilan County’s Suao Harbor (蘇澳港), where the navy took delivery of two indigenous Tuo Chiang-class corvettes. The corvettes, An Chiang (安江) and Wan Chiang (萬江), along with the introduction of the coast guard’s third and fourth 4,000-tonne cutters earlier this month, are a testament to Taiwan’s shipbuilding capability and signify the nation’s resolve to defend democracy and freedom, Tsai said. The vessels are also the last two of six Tuo Chiang-class corvettes ordered from Lungteh Shipbuilding Co (龍德造船) by the navy, Tsai said. The first Tuo Chiang-class vessel delivered was Ta Chiang (塔江)