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US election heading for a showdown

The Florida presidential election war headed for a historic showdown in the US Supreme Court, where George W. Bush asked the justices to throw out the hand-counted tally that narrowed his lead over Vice President Al Gore.

Florida's highest court, Bush's lawyers said, ``plainly rewrote the election laws.''

Bush's team hoped to convince the nation's highest court that the late-counted votes were unlawfully added to the pivotal Florida totals, while Gore's attorneys were urging the nine justices to let those votes stand.

Ninety minutes of oral arguments in the extraordinary case were scheduled for Friday morning (early Saturday in Taiwan).

Even as the legal battle centered on the Supreme Court, Bush and Gore developed their transition strategies and skirmished in the courts in Florida. About 600,000 ballots from Miami-Dade County were loaded into a rental van before dawn Friday and on the road to a Tallahassee courthouse -- in case another recount is ordered -- after nearly 500,000 ballots arrived there Thursday from Palm Beach County in a Ryder rental truck.

And more ballots may be fetched: Bush attorneys late Thursday asked Circuit Judge N. Sanders Sauls to order an additional 1.2 million ballots brought in from Volusia, Broward and Pinellas counties. The judge has not yet considered the request.

``We believe there were a number of illegal votes for Gore in those counties,'' Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said.

The Gore legal team, which is contesting the Florida election that gave Bush a 537-vote lead, filed an urgent plea with the Florida Supreme Court asking that hand-counting of the ballots begin while Sauls, who will hold a hearing today, decides whether the recounts could be added to Gore's totals.

``There is no reason to delay counting ballots even one day,'' the brief read.

Bush's legal team, in a motion with Sauls on Thursday, cited more than a dozen reasons why the judge should toss out Gore's contest. In the Republicans' first formal response to the Democrats' lawsuit, they claimed Gore's challenge was baseless because the real election wasn't between the Texas governor and the vice president, but between the separate groups of 25 Florida electors.

The motion also says Gore's lawyers filed their challenge after the 10-day deadline required by state law and that manually counting only part of the ballots is illegal. And the judicial recounts the Gore camp is seeking are ``illegal, inappropriate, and manifestly unfair,'' the filing said.

The justices agreed to decide a fairly narrow question: Did the Florida Supreme Court rule correctly when it allowed ballots hand-counted after Nov. 14 to be added to the vote total? And what would be the consequences if the justices decided the state court was wrong?

Bush's lawyers said allowing the Florida court's ruling to stand would mean ``every close presidential election will be transformed into a litigation circus,'' their court briefs said.

``The partisan struggle in Florida today is precisely the kind of chaotic situation that would have been avoided by adherence to the statutory deadline'' for certifying votes, Bush's lawyers said in court papers filed Thursday in advance of Friday's session. ``Congress did not intend state courts to be free to change the rules after a presidential election.''

Gore's lawyers countered in court briefs that including the hand-counted votes ``is not like changing the rules after the game has been played. It is instead like using a more powerful photo-finish camera ... to determine the winner of the race more accurately.''

Bush's lawyers contended the Florida Legislature had the constitutional authority to step in and name its own set of presidential electors. Gore's attorneys argued that state lawmakers would be on shaky constitutional ground.
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