Lawmakers leery of deciding vote

It could be ugly if an electoral impasse leaves Congress to decide the next president, some say.

©Washington Post

© St. Petersburg Times, published December 10, 2000

WASHINGTON -- Less than two years after the Senate voted against stripping Bill Clinton of his presidency, the see-sawing legal battle over election results in Florida could draw Congress into the tangled process of choosing Clinton's successor.

The U.S. Supreme Court Saturday halted, at least temporarily, a statewide manual recount that had been ordered a day earlier by Florida's high court. But if the courts ultimately allow a recount to proceed, and if it catapults Vice President Al Gore ahead of Texas Gov. George W. Bush, then -- for the first time in 124 years -- there may be two dueling slates of presidential electors when the new Congress meets in early January to count electoral votes.

Of all the possible scenarios for resolving the bizarre presidential contest, many lawmakers and government experts say the most politically combustible would be to buck it to the Congress, which was left almost evenly split by the Nov. 7 election. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said Friday that congressional involvement would be a disaster.

Yet the Constitution and federal statutes dictate that if Florida officials and the courts cannot agree on whether Gore or Bush won the state's 25 electoral votes, then Congress must step in as the arbiter.

Joined by House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., at a news conference Saturday at the Capitol, Gore campaign chairman William Daley said that in the event of an impasse, "It moves back into this ball game, back into this place."

Some lawmakers, including Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, a senior Republican, expect the presidential contest to be decided before it gets to Congress -- most likely by the U.S. Supreme Court. "I think we should take one step at a time and not get ahead of ourselves," he said.

But others in the House and Senate are consumed by speculation that the historic election dispute is heading their way.

The working assumption on Capitol Hill is that Republicans and Democrats will close ranks behind their respective presidential candidates, and that the Republican-controlled House and the evenly divided Senate -- with Gore still able to cast a tie-breaking vote -- will deadlock.

With House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and other congressional Republicans angrily accusing the Democrats and Florida's Supreme Court justices of a partisan effort to steal the election from Bush, a debate in Congress over who won the election would almost certainly be brutal and produce long-lasting animosities.

"It's a very dangerous path to go down," said Rep. David Price, D-N.C., a political scientist.

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