Word: recounting
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...Bush camp has already offered Gore a one-recount endgame; this is the week for Gore to think about it. On Tuesday, the state of Florida seems determined to certify a winner of the machine recount, and at week's end (now Saturday) they'll have a final number with overseas ballots. The vice president, while he decides how many more generations of legal and electoral wrangling he wants to endorse, will be hearing from high-end Democrats how he'll get blamed for dragging this thing out. And how he'd be much better off running...
...State of Florida v. itself, and Round 1 goes to Gore. The veep's manual-recount hounds in four Democratic counties are off and running after U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks ruled Monday afternoon that the counts could continue over Bush lawyers' objections. Secretary of State Katherine Harris, however, insists that the Tuesday-at-5 deadline for all recounts to be done is hard and fast. Of course the hand-counters, led by Volusia County (and now, says Warren Christopher, officially assisted by the Gore campaign because the Republican Harris is biased) are suing her for an extension...
...Monday, the GOP lawyers in Palm Beach tried to get the eight lawsuits over the Palm Beach ballot consolidated at the state level in Tallahassee, but Monday the judge recused himself and it's a waiting game again. Republicans may appeal the afternoon's hand-recount ruling. But Harris - and the news out of the Volusia/Gore suit that will determine whether that Tuesday deadline holds - may the Bush camp's best hope to keep this thing under control...
...Gore camp is waiting for an edge. If the hand-recount margins come out a few hundred fatter for Gore, and give him the advantage, as they are almost guaranteed to, the veep's team can claim the election by stamping those numbers on the public brain and insisting upon their accuracy. That would force the Bush to either concede, sue for invalidation or call for their own by-hand recount in some Republican counties - making liars out of all the Bush campers who spent the weekend telling everyone how unreliable and vulnerable hand counts are. A quandary indeed...
...Harris's problem, and Bush's, is that Florida law allows for requested recounts, and a judge with little appreciation for good-of-the-nation atmospherics could easily conclude that it's common sense for the certification deadline to come and go before those recounts are done. (Volusia County, oddly, expects to have its recount completed in time, but an eager Palm Beach, Dade and others are waiting in the wings.) And then it's our problem too - a hand recount in Palm Beach or Dade could take weeks, and easily run up against that December 18 electoral college coven...