WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - In a marathon political drama, George W. Bush widened his Florida lead over Al Gore after overseas ballots were counted yesterday, but the fate of the presidential election could rest on tiny, square pieces of ballot paper.
The Texas governor picked up 1,380 votes from the overseas absentee ballots compared with Mr. Gore's 750, more than tripling Mr. Bush's lead to 930, according to unofficial state returns.
But he still cannot declare victory until the Florida Supreme Court meets tomorrow to decide whether the results of hand recounts under way in Palm Beach and Broward counties can be included in the state's final vote tally. Miami-Dade County is expected to begin manual ballot checks tomorrow.
The hand recounts, punctuated by testy exchanges and bickering between Republicans and Democrats over the pieces of ballot paper, known as chads, could last through the week.
Bush campaign supporters said they will press to end the process because it's tainted by partisanship and human error.
Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, enlisted by the Bush campaign to lead the GOP assault, said ballots had been dropped, misfiled, and mishandled by exhausted counters. “I think when the American people learn about these things, they're going to ask themselves, `What in the name of God is going on here?'”
If the state's highest court allows the results of the hand counts to be added to the total, the race would be considered a toss-up until the last ballot is counted, possibly by Dec. 1, say experts tracking the election.
The shift from the courts to the recount centers is the latest development in a national election that seems to change course each day.
Or each hour.
Gore campaign officials hope the hand recounts in the three Democratic-leaning counties will find enough additional votes for Mr. Gore to push the vice president over the top in the Sunshine State. Bush officials expressed strong concern yesterday that the counts are inherently flawed.
At stake are the state's coveted 25 electoral votes, which will give either candidate the margin needed to win the White House.
The seven Democratic justices who sit on the state Supreme Court are expected to hear oral arguments tomorrow in what could be the most pivotal court case in the election so far.
With the hearing a day away, Gore and Bush campaign officials ripped into one another as the election was put on hold after the high court on Friday stopped Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris from certifying the state's election results.
Ms. Harris, co-chair of Florida's Bush campaign, was prepared to announce the winner of the state yesterday and already had decided not to accept the results of the manual recounts. But she must now wait for the Supreme Court's decision.
Both campaigns spent much of the day accusing each other of circumventing the will of the voters.
“I'm sick of hearing it,” said Palm Beach County voter Sydney Ricketts. “I don't see what all this accomplishes on either side.”
Nowhere was this more evident than in the modern, disaster bunker that's been set up as the recount center in Palm Beach County.
The mood shifted from cheery and amiable in the morning to tense and openly hostile by the afternoon, underscoring the tedious business of counting and studying voting cards.
Tempers rose with Gore and Bush people snapping at each at the drop of a chad, the piece of paper that is punched on a ballot.
Several times the head of the elections board, Judge Charles Burton, admonished Gore and Bush campaign officials for bickering within earshot of the counters.
The process, now in its fourth day, resumed several hours after the last of the overseas absentee ballots were tallied in the state's 67 counties.
So far, Mr. Gore is believed to have picked up 29 additional votes in the hand counts here, and 53 votes in Broward County.
But both counties are several days from finishing the agonizing task of checking a combined 1 million ballots, or about one in every six cast in Florida.
The manual counts were requested by Gore officials because they say the punch-card ballots used in Florida were flawed and the votes were not all picked up by machine tabulations. Because of “hanging chads,” those tiny pieces of paper punched from ballot cards by voters that still cling to the hole, the machines often miss the vote.
But the pressure has been taking a toll on officials, especially in the wake of the recent court decisions.
At one point, Judge Burton, a Democrat, traded jabs with GOP lawyer John Bolton over a pile of Gore ballots that erroneously included six Bush votes in the stack. The judge, who appeared frustrated, eventually walked away saying, “Why don't you fight it out and come get me when you're finished.”
Republicans were livid at his response. “We're talking about votes not being in the proper pile, and would have been counted as Gore votes,” complained Tucker Eskew, a Bush aide. “As we've said before: This process is fatally flawed. We've talked about the potential for this.”
Theresa LePore, the Palm Beach County elections chief who is under fire for designing the county's so-called “butterfly ballot,” said she ordered a recount of the precinct in question. “I was made aware of this earlier, before it was brought up by [Bush] observers,” she said, adding that she did not know how the Bush ballots got into the Gore stack.
The counting, which begins at 7 a.m. and ends at midnight, is done by 25 teams made up of a Republican counter, a Democratic counter, and one representative each from the Gore and Bush camps.
If there is a question as they sift through the ballots, they place the card in a “questionable pile.”
They also must put a ballot in the questionable pile if one of the Gore or Bush observers merely says the word, “protest.” Ultimately, the ballots under questions are decided by the three members of the county canvassing board, all Democrats.
In some cases, observers have gotten so close to the counter as he or she holds the ballots to the light that it has caused tempers to flare.
Like back alley brawlers, Democratic and Republican lawyers scratched and swung for every vote to go their way.
“They protest even when the vote is clear,” said Patty Smith, 45, a Democratic counter. “You're sitting there for seven hours going through hundreds of ballots. It's very strict and we're not allowed to talk.” There are no windows in the amphitheater-like room, which is monitored by three cameras.
Of the 1,900 ballots her team inspected on Friday, only one hanging chad was found, she said.
Charles Anderson, 43, a Republican counter, said he has not experienced any problems during his shifts. “This is the greatest history lesson anyone could have,” he said after his shift ended.
But there are problems.
The handling of the ballots has caused chads to fall off - possibly causing a ballot to show a different vote. And then there's the question - however minute - of whether officials should count a “dimpled chad” as a vote. That's when a card has been punched, but the chad is still in the hole.
Under an agreement with Broward County, officials here have been counting the punch marks as votes.
Democrats believe Mr. Gore can pick up enough votes in the recounts, but one observer said the overseas balloting may make that difficult.
“That's a lot of votes to overcome,” said L. Cason Brown, a Democrat and former assistant Palm Beach County property appraiser. “I could see a few hundred, but 900 is a lot.”
In papers filed with the Florida Supreme Court yesterday, Gore lawyers said manual recounts have been used successfully to help resolve other elections.
“The outcome of Florida's presidential election will determine who becomes the next president of the United States.” For that reason it is essential, the vice president's lawyers continued, “that the voters of Florida, and all of the citizens of our country, have great confidence that the individual declared the winner of the election here actually was the choice of Florida's voters.”
The counting in Palm Beach County is expected to last through this week, and Broward County, which began its hand recount a day earlier, could be finished by Thursday. In Miami-Dade County, with nearly 650,000 ballots, officials estimate the hand recount could take almost two weeks.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
First Published November 19, 2000, 12:26 p.m.
