Election briefs

Compiled from Times wires

© St. Petersburg Times, published December 11, 2000

Legislature may wait on ruling before voting

TALLAHASSEE -- The Republican leadership in the Florida Senate may delay a decision on selecting presidential electors until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on ballot recounts, a key lawmaker said Sunday.

A delay would allow GOP lawmakers to decide whether the move is constitutionally and politically wise.

"We can use time as our ally," said Senate Rules Committee Chairman Tom Lee, a confidant of Senate President John McKay.

There's little doubt that the Republican-run Legislature would select a slate of electors loyal to George W. Bush. However, the U.S. Supreme Court would likely end Al Gore's race for the presidency by permanently stopping recounts of Florida ballots.

A special session of the Legislature began Friday and continues today with House and Senate hearings on a resolution that would name Bush electors. The committees could vote today.

The full House is in session Tuesday and the full Senate on Wednesday, and each could vote then for the resolution.

After partial recount, both sides claim gains

TALLAHASSEE -- Election officials had tallied less than a tenth of the ballots when the U.S. Supreme Court halted the vote recounts across Florida on Saturday afternoon. But representatives of both Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush instantly claimed that their candidate had been gaining ground.

Ron Klain, a senior adviser for Gore, said on Saturday that partial results in 13 counties had given the vice president a net gain of 58 votes. Barry Jackson, a Republican observer who watched the recounting of a little more than a third of the ballots in Miami-Dade County, reported that Bush had gained 42 votes there.

An unofficial statewide tally reported by the Associated Press, based on reports culled from some of Florida's 67 counties, found that Gore had gained a net of 16 votes.

So what is the real figure? It is difficult to say. The problem lies with the ground rules that Judge Terry P. Lewis of Leon County Circuit Court set on Friday night. "No partial counts will be done or reported, formally or informally," Lewis wrote in his order.

Republicans, ignoring the reports of their own observer at the Miami-Dade recount, complained that the Democrats had violated the court's order. Lewis declined to sanction anyone. But on Sunday people were cautious.

The effect was that Democrats and Republicans alike had the same basic message Sunday: Off the record, our guy is winning.

Contrary to rumors, ballots stay in Tallahassee

TALLAHASSEE -- The battle for the White House may have left town, but the ballots are staying behind.

So many rumors about the whereabouts of the 12,000 partly counted ballots swirled about on Sunday that Craig Waters, the spokesman for the Florida Supreme Court, came into work and told the world that they had never left.

"There has been no order from any court requiring that the ballots be transferred from here to any other place," Waters said on the steps of the Florida Supreme Court on Sunday afternoon. "The court papers, but excluding the ballots, left this building at 9:30 this morning."

Waters put to rest a series of rumors about the location of the ballots. One story put them on a state-owned jet headed for Washington. Another rumor had the ballots still in Tallahassee, maybe at the public library, maybe at the Leon County Courthouse. The wildest story said state officials had driven the ballots to Washington but turned around when the Supreme Court justices said they did not want them.

The stories were fueled by a report on CNN that showed armed officers carting boxes of what the network said were Florida ballots up the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court.

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