A Florida judge was set to rule Monday on Al Gore's request for a recount of thousands of ballots that could determine the battle for the White House, which George W. Bush claims he has already won.
Judge Sanders Sauls ruling follows a marathon second day of hearings Sunday in Gore's contest of the November 7 presidential election results in Florida. Sauls said he would present his decision in the morning, but did not set a time.
On Sunday, the Bush team launched a concerted attack on vice president Gore's challenge, to shoot down his petition for the recounts, urging him to concede defeat.
But Gore insisted the battle was far from over. He believes that a manual recount of more than 12,000 votes from Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties would give him a Florida victory and the keys to the White House.
Speaking on US television late Sunday, Gore declared that he would abandon his attempts to contest the outcome of the presidential election if he loses upcoming court decisions -- in the Florida courts and in the US Supreme Court which heard last week an appeal by Bush's legal team to toss out the hand recounts.
"Regardless of how it comes out, whoever is sworn in as president on January 20 should have the support of all the people," he stressed on CBS's "60 Minutes" television show.
"And if that's not me, I will not question the fairness or legitimacy of the final outcome," he said.
Meanwhile, attorneys for Bush systematically targeted every argument brought by the Democrats before the Leon County Circuit Court in the Florida capital Tallahassee.
In his closing arguments, Barry Richard said the Gore camp had failed to demonstrate anything was wrong with the vote count that gave Bush a 537-vote lead in the southeastern state.
"The burden is on the plaintiffs and they are light years from carrying any of that burden," he said. The Bush team then asked for the case to be thrown out.
But Gore lawyer David Boies said it was imperative that the court tally votes he said were improperly rejected.
"There are many hundreds, possibly thousands and that is more than enough to make a difference in this case," he said.
He also scored points when one of the key witnesses for Bush testified that manual recounts in close elections were desirable.
Should Sauls grant the request, Bush's lawyers want him to order new tallies in two other counties, where they claim vote counters used arbitrary standards in counting ballots.
Bush's running mate Richard Cheney said Gore should simply give up. "I do think that it's time for him to concede." In an interview with NBC he said: "I think history would regard him in a better light if he were to bring this to a close."
But Gore's top legal adviser, Warren Christopher, said the vice-president would not throw in the towel just yet.
"It's certainly far too early to concede with those three proceedings going forward," he said in reference to Gore's challenge of the elections and two other pending cases.
The Democrats were frantically battling to beat a December 12 deadline for the appointment of Florida's electors to the Electoral College that names the president.
Republicans in the Florida legislature have warned that if the electors are not named on time, they could do the selection themselves in a special session. Since Republicans dominate both the House and the Senate, they would be sure to pick Bush supporters.
Christopher, a former secretary of state, told CBS that such a move would be "a serious mistake" and that neither candidate would want to be elected that way.
Under the US system, the winner of the popular vote in a given state is awarded electors equivalent to the number of lawmakers the state has in the US Congress.
With the outcome of the presidential vote still in the balance, Florida's 25 electors will determine who gets the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
Two other hearings are due to start in Tallahassee on Wednesday which could also be decisive in who becomes the 43rd president of the United States.
Democratic activists filed the lawsuits seeking to have 25,000 ballots thrown out because Republicans allegedly tampered with absentee ballot applications in two counties.
The Bush camp, on the other hand, could benefit from a Florida Supreme Court case filed by Republican voter Matt Butler, who claims manual recounts that were conducted in several counties -- and that boosted Gore's showing -- were unfair and unconstitutional.
In Washington, the US Supreme court has still to rule in a case brought by Bush, who claims the Florida justices had overstepped their mandate in ordering that the original Florida results should be amended to reflect hand recounts completed by November 21 -- TALLAHASSEE (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
