Palm Beach county election officials on Tuesday decided to suspend a manual recount of the US presidential ballots.
The county's election commission voted 2-1 to halt the manual recount of some 431,000 votes after receiving an opinion from the state's top election official that such a recount would be improper.
The recount, which was to have begun at 7 am (1200 GMT), was expected to take several days, but was seen as having a potential to change the outcome of the state results from the US presidential election, in which George W. Bush was ahead of Al Gore by a razor-thin margin.
Whoever wins the state would get the 25 electoral votes needed to decide the outcome of the race for the White House -- WEST PALM BEACH, Florida (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
