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Florida court considers military absentee ballots

Judge L. Ralph Smith presides over Friday hearing on military absentee ballots

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- The Leon County Circuit Court was holding a hearing Friday on whether overseas military absentee ballots were illegally rejected in a number of Florida counties.

Republicans are asking the court to order election officials to count overseas military ballots even if they bear an illegible, late or U.S. postmark, or lack a handwritten date, and even if the county can't locate the request for the absentee ballot or the signatures on the application and actual ballot don't match exactly.

A manual recount is going forward in Broward County and Palm Beach County. The Palm Beach County Canvassing Board held a hearing Friday morning on how to count ballots with dimpled chad.

COURT DOCUMENTS Key election-related petitions and briefs filed with the U.S. Supreme Court and Florida courts Provided by FindLaw (These require Adobe® Acrobat® Reader™) • George W. Bush petitions for appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and related documents • Florida Supreme Court ruling on inclusion of ballot recounts and related documents • Florida Election Code and related laws • Notable cases on election law • Full text of filings in election lawsuits

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Election officials in Miami-Dade County voted to end its manual recount because they said they would not be able to complete it by the November 26th deadline set by the Florida Supreme Court. The Gore campaign went back to the Florida Supreme Court to ask it to order Miami-Dade County to resume the manual recount, but the court on Thursday rejected the request.

Gore attorney David Boies said that the campaign will go to court to contest the certified results of the Miami-Dade County vote, arguing that there should have been a hand recount there, and that the ballots that were counted before the hand recount was suspended should have been added to the final total.

And in Seminole County, a judge was set to hear evidence Monday on a lawsuit filed by a Democratic attorney alleging that a county elections official illegally allowed Republican officials to fill in missing information on 4,700 absentee ballot requests.

The suit asks that the 4,700 vote be thrown out if they can be identified, or if not, that all 15,000 absentee votes cast in the county be rejected.

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Democrats protest exclusion of ballots in Palm Beach County
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Lieberman says Dems not trying to block absentee ballots
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Bush camp blasts 'flawed' count
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Manual recounts continue as court refuses Republican request for a halt
November 18, 2000

Florida State Courts
Florida Southern District Court
Electoral College
Volusia County government
Palm Beach County government

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