Gore Watch 2000: Update

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.--Al Gore won a major victory today in his quest for the White House when the Florida Supreme Court ordered the manual recounts he sought in the state's contested presidential election.
The Supreme Court shocked Republican lawyers when it ordered manual recounts statewide, reversing a lower court ruling that had rejected Gore's requests for the hand counts.
The court split 4-3 in Gore's favor.
"The Circuit court shall order a manual recount of all undervotes in any Florida county where such a recount has not yet occurred. Because time is of the essence, a recount shall begin immediately," court spokesman Craig Waters said.
It was not immediately known how many ballots would be subject to the recount order.
The court also trimmed George W. Bush's certified 537-vote lead in Florida to 154 votes by ordering that those tallies that had been counted in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties be added to the totals of each candidate.
The opinion overturned a ruling by Circuit Judge N. Sanders Sauls.
The high court's ruling came almost two hours after Gore had been pushed to the edge of his legal options when two Leon County Circuit Court judges refused to throw out any of 25,000 absentee ballots that had been challenged in Martin and Seminole counties.
In those cases, judges Nikki Clark and Terry Lewis ruled that "despite irregularities in the requests for absentee ballots, neither the sanctity of the ballots nor the integrity of the elections has been compromised," a court clerk read from a prepared statement.
The elections "reflect a full and fair expression of the will of the voters," in Seminole and Martin counties, the clerk, Terre Cass, read.
The ruling by the Supreme Court guaranteed to renew debate about how to decipher a vote on a paper ballot. It also left in doubt what would Tuesday, Dec. 12-- the deadline for Florida to certify its 25 representatives to the Electoral College.
The high court ruling may have been foreshadowed by a surprising legal step taken by Bush's lawyers this morning when they filed papers to supplement arguments made Thursday before the Supreme Court.
In a rare clarification one day after oral arguments, Bush's lawyer told the state Supreme Court it did not have authority to grant Gore's request to set aside Bush's 537-vote victory and order recounts of thousands of disputed ballots.
Gore's lawyers rebutted in a last-minute filing of their own, telling the Supreme Court that Florida law made it clear that "the results of this election-- and every election" were subject to judicial review.
The split decision was not surprising considering that the state Supreme Court justices posed tough questions for lawyers on both sides.
"We're now here on December the 7th, with December the 12th, you know, fast approaching," Justice Harry Lee Anstead told Gore lawyer David Boies in the final question of the session. "How can we resolve an issue like that at this late date?"
"There's never been a rule that says you have to recount all the ballots in an election contest," Boies replied. He said only a small fraction of more than 1 million ballots need be reviewed.
Besides, he said, the Bush campaign never asked for a recount.
Earlier, though, lawyers for Bush and Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris argued that the court would be exceeding its legal authority if it granted Gore the relief he seeks.
Harris has already certified Bush's 537-vote lead, a margin Gore insists would evaporate if all the votes were counted.
Joseph Klock, representing Harris, said the court would have to "create a pile of law" to grant Gore's request-- an obvious word of caution in view of a separation-of-powers argument that says that would intrude on the Legislature's prerogatives.
An appeal was already being prepared in a third absentee ballot case dismissed Thursday by another local judge, said Alvin Smith, an attorney who represented a Florida Panhandle voter looking to throw out more than 12,000 votes in that region of the state.

The plot thickens.... da dua duh..........