Bush, Gore supporters lay groundwork for legal challenges

Smith talks with reporters on Sunday

Baker extends offer to end impasse

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida (CNN) -- Both sides in the contested presidential election in Florida laid the groundwork Sunday for possible legal challenges, as it appeared increasingly certain that courts will play a major role in determining the next president of the United States.

In an unusual press briefing that was billed as an attempt to clear up confusion surrounding the state's election law, Jim Smith, a former Florida attorney general and secretary of state, outlined legal requirements for counting so-called "overseas ballots" -- those ballots sent by mail from Floridians living overseas, most of whom are in the military. Smith, currently not in office, was speaking as a representative of the Florida Republican Party.

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Those ballots, which must be received by Friday, have become crucial in a state where only a few hundred votes separate Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican who leads in the state, from Vice President Al Gore. Because the election was so close across the country, the winner of Florida and its 25 electoral votes will become the next president.

"The privilege to vote abroad comes with the corresponding duty to follow practices adopted by the state of Florida to assure timely and fair elections, where an overseas voter has exactly the same amount of time to vote as a voter here at home," Smith said.

He then ran down a list of those practices, which include a requirement that the ballots have an appropriate postmark of no later than November 7, that they must be placed in the proper envelopes that were mailed with the ballots, and that they must be appropriately certified by the voter or a legal representative.

"We're trying to make clear that it is, in fact, too late to cast that ballot now," Smith said. It was a none-too-subtle implication in a state under increasing scrutiny for its voting practices.

The legal fight takes an important turn Monday, when U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks will hear a request in Palm Beach from the Bush campaign to halt manual recounts in the state. As both sides await that hearing, their representatives gave some clues Sunday about their strategies.

James Baker, the former secretary of state who is monitoring Florida vote recounts for the Bush team, appeared on all the major networks' Sunday morning political talk shows. He argued that the automatic recount of all the votes cast in each of the state's 67 counties -- launched by the Florida secretary of state's office and set to end this Friday with the tabulation of thousands of outstanding overseas ballots -- should stand as the final recount effort.

"Voting machines are not Republican and are not Democratic, and are not subject to conscious or unconscious bias," Baker insisted.

A full manual recount in Palm Beach County, one of Florida's most populous, would involve the close review of more than 400,000 ballots by hand. It was not immediately clear when such a recount would take place because of the pending GOP court challenge.

Appearing before reporters about 1:30 a.m. Sunday, Palm Beach County's three-person canvassing board voted 2 to 1 to ask for the hand recount after reviewing hundreds of ballots checked in four sample precincts in the county.

They had been asked by Democrat Gore's campaign to check for possible instances in which tabulation machines had failed to note marked ballots.

Canvassing board members Carol Roberts, a county commissioner, and Theresa LePore, the county's supervisor of elections, approved the motion for the full manual recount. Board chairman and Palm Beach County Judge Charles Burton voted against the motion, saying he preferred to first seek an advisory legal opinion from state authorities.

The Gore campaign praised the decision Sunday morning.

"It only confirms what we've been saying all along. There is a process in place to handle the recount. We need to follow it," said Chris Lehane, Gore's chief spokesman.

The Bush campaign reacted negatively to the prospect of a 100 percent hand recount in Palm Beach County. Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett said the 1 percent sample count finished overnight was "mass confusion" and "subjectivity that bordered on the ridiculous," adding that what was seen in the county "gave evidence" for the reason the injunction was sought.

The Republican candidate's legal team in Florida filed papers Saturday in federal court seeking to halt manual recounts in the state. A judge is set to consider the request Monday.

"Anybody who watched that scene," Bartlett said, "saw a very unsettling process."

Hand counts, Bartlett said, are "a fundamentally flawed process" that "undermines confidence" in the election.

Also on Sunday, Volusia County began its hand recount of more than 184,000 votes. Since the process is expected to take at least three days, local officials were seeking to extend the 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline to complete the task.

A partial recount was scheduled to begin Monday in Broward County, and officials in Dade County are set to meet Tuesday to decide whether to hold a recount there. All of these counties are predominantly Democratic.

At a news conference early Sunday, Palm Beach County officials voted to hand count all ballots cast in the county in Tuesday's presidential election

Bush now leads Gore in Florida by 288 votes, according to the Associated Press, which has monitored the Florida Secretary of State's recount efforts. State officials said their recount of 66 counties showed Bush leading by 960 votes. Palm Beach County is the 67th.

The race for the presidency hinges on the Sunshine State's pending 25 electoral votes, which will be awarded to the major party candidate deemed to have carried the state after the recounts -- and any ensuing legal processes -- have run their course.

Some 5.8 million votes were cast in Florida last Tuesday.

The Baker offer

Appearing early Sunday afternoon on CNN's "Late Edition," Baker extended an offer he described as a compromise with the Gore campaign, challenging Gore's people to accept the results of the full automatic recount conducted throughout the state late last week. The race in the state, and the national race, Baker contended, would then depend on the tally of the outstanding overseas absentee ballots, to be completed this Friday.

"The Gore campaign ought to agree with us that we will go with the automatic recount," Baker said. "They should say, 'OK, we will stop all these shenanigans. We will stop calling for recounts.'"

"We will then withdraw our lawsuit, and we both agree to accept the results of the overseas ballots," Baker continued. "That what's best for the country, that is what's reasonable."

Barring an agreement, Baker said, "We will vigorously contest the efforts for a manual recount in Florida."

Responding a few minutes later on "Late Edition," Gore campaign chairman William Daley questioned the motivation of the Republicans. "Why won't they accept what happens through these hand counts?" Daley asked. "They've got observers. This has been done in an open, public way."

Gore's point man in Florida, former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that Florida election laws called for manual recounts in the sort of tight or questionable circumstances that have arisen in Palm Beach, Volusia and some other Florida counties.

"This is the procedure called for by Florida law. The law calls for the opportunity for hand counts to check machine counts," Christopher said. "They are checking the machine count to make sure it was accurate.

"This is not a procedure that is peculiar to Florida. Many states in the union have hand counts," Christopher added. "Machine counts are often inaccurate, just as you sometimes find your credit card bills are inaccurate."

Where next in Palm Beach County?

Roberts, the Palm Beach canvassing board member, made the manual recount motion in the early hours of Sunday because she said the board's sample hand review Saturday indicated the possibility that hundreds of voters' ballots had not been counted last week.

The daylong, unofficial count found 33 more votes for Gore in the four precincts. Bush gained 14 votes.

"Given the importance of the election and the fact that the present margin is approximately 300 votes in the state, I believe the people of Palm Beach County have entrusted us with the power to voice their right to participate in their government," Roberts said.

Democratic officials present during the count encouraged the board's review. Republicans spoke against it, arguing it was a "painful" and "uncertain" process.

The board also agreed to meet again Monday to discuss the issue further.

The manual counting process began about 2 p.m. Saturday. Election workers sorted through the ballots, checking for anomalies such as partially punched cards.

Potentially problematic ballots then were gathered into one pile, where canvassing board members scrutinized them. Sometimes, board members held them up to the light, checking for marks that would indicate a voter had tried to punch the name of one candidate or another.

Several thousand ballots in Palm Beach County had been mechanically rejected last week because machines could not detect punched votes in the cards.

Distinctions were made by those conducting the recount based on the condition of the "chad," or the small piece of paper that should have been punched out of the ballot card with the proper exertion of pressure by a voter using a blunt-tipped stylus.

Some chads were found to be hanging from the card, indicating the voter's intention to cast his or her ballot for a certain candidate. Other chads were found to protrude from the card, or to have been slightly pierced, but were still attached to the ballot.

"There are no uniform, objective standards here. It's all subjective," Baker said on "Meet the Press." "We're in a situation here where election officials are trying to divine the intention of the voter."

War of words over hand count

Baker said the Bush camp would fight the Gore efforts to secure recounts in Florida on a number of fronts.

"The Gore campaign is asking for a third recount here. We can go into Wisconsin, we can go into Iowa and start recounting," Baker said, leveling a strong insinuation that the Bush campaign could call for recounts in a handful of states where Gore was thought to have defeated Bush by a narrow margin, including New Mexico, which CNN moved from Gore's column back to the "too close to call" category Friday.

Florida election officials hold ballots up to the light as they conduct a manual recount Saturday

"We wouldn't be in this position if the Gore campaign had been willing to accept the results of the recount in Florida," Baker said. "They want these recounts to be in counties where they have these large margins. We don't think that's fair."

Christopher responded, "We chose those four counties not because they were Democratic, but because there were anomalies there." He was referring to the dispute over the layout of the Palm Beach County ballot, which may have contributed to Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan gaining thousands of votes there.

At least some of those votes for Buchanan, Gore's team argues, were intended for Gore. Buchanan agreed with that point on "Late Edition" but insisted that votes cast for him should remain in his column.

Christopher added that the Bush campaign "absolutely" had the right to request recounts in other states, but he sounded an optimistic note that the dispute may end "in a matter of days, not weeks," and that further calls to open up new tallies in other states would not be made.

Bob Dole, former Senate majority leader and the 1996 Republican presidential candidate, weighed in Sunday, telling reporters that politics needed to be swept "off the streets of Florida" as soon as possible. He voiced some suspicion about the intent of the ongoing recounts.

"This is not a Florida election. This is a national election," Dole, said. "Democrats control the election apparatus of 47 of 67 counties in Florida. They're about to give us the double whammy here."

"This is a test for our country," House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri said Sunday, appearing on ABC's "This Week."

"We are a mature democracy. We ought to show patience on all of our parts in order to get to the right result," he said.

Developments elsewhere

Florida was not the only state in which the presidential election outcome remained in doubt, although it was by far the most important on the electoral map.

In New Mexico, with five electoral votes at stake and a race even closer than Florida's, election officials planned to begin counting "in lieu of" ballots Monday and reveal the results Monday or Tuesday.

The "in lieu of" ballots are from people who showed up at polling stations on Election Day, claiming they had not received absentee ballots they had requested. They were given ballots to fill out, which then were sealed.

Bush had a 17-vote lead in New Mexico, The Associated Press reported. Republican lawyers asked the courts to order protection for early voting and absentee ballots cast statewide.

The five electoral votes are not enough to sway the outcome of the election, but races also remained close in Wisconsin, Iowa and Oregon. Gore won all three and Republicans have threatened to seek recounts, but Gore is leading by at least 5,000 votes in each of those states.

CNN.com writers Randy Lilleston, Ian Christopher McCaleb and Mike Ferullo, CNN Correspondents Mike Boettcher, Candy Crowley and Patty Davis, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.