CHAOS REIGNS
IN U.S. VOTE
By ROBERT RUSSO, THE
CANADIAN PRESS
Friday, November 10, 2000
Results of pivotal Florida recount
may take a week ... Fiasco In Florida ... Who Will Be
President
WASHINGTON - U.S. democracy remains grid locked
in the tightest presidential race in American history as
Republican George W. Bush's lead over Democrat rival Al
Gore in all-or-nothing Florida slipped to a mere 229
votes in a suspense-filled recount yesterday.
Katherine Harris, Florida's secretary
of state, said it could be as late as Tuesday -- a week
after the national election -- before the state
certifies ballot results from all 67 counties.
And Harris said it may take until Nov.
17 to tabulate ballots cast by Floridians living
overseas.
"Nobody ever said that democracy
was simple or efficient," said election board
member Bob Crawford.
The only certainty is that whoever
emerges as the 43rd U.S. president would be a contested,
if not tainted, chief executive.
LEAD REDUCED
Chaos reigns.
Officially Bush still has a 1,784-vote
edge over Gore based on the Tuesday night results.
However, an unofficial tally by The
Associated Press of the recount had Bush's lead reduced
to 229 votes with 66 of Florida's 67 counties reporting.
Florida's 25 electoral college votes
are mandatory for either man to amass the 270 electoral
votes needed to claim the keys to the White House.
The electoral votes go to the
candidate who gets a simple majority of the 6 million
votes cast in Florida
Americans were confounded by the
increasingly shrill post-election bickering common to
unstable far-flung republics and unheard of in a country
that prides itself on being a paragon of democracy.
A long held tradition in the United
States sees the losing presidential candidate graciously
offering his support to the victor. But statesmanship
has given way to sniping between the two candidates in
this election.
Gore campaign chairman William Daley
said his party will support legal actions by voters and
supporters in Beach Palm County -- liberal and mostly
Jewish -- who say a confusing ballot may have led them
to vote accidentally for arch-conservative candidate Pat
Buchanan.
Daley suggested the confusing ballot
placing Gore and Buchanan's names side by side was the
only plausible answer.
CONCURS
Buchanan, who left Bush's Republican
Party earlier this year, agreed, saying most of the
3,407 votes he got in Palm Beach County belonged to
Gore.
"I don't want any votes that I
did not receive and I don't want to win any votes by
mistake," Buchanan said. "It seems to me that
these 3,000 votes people are talking about -- most of
those are probably not my vote and that may be enough to
give the margin to Mr. Gore."
Daley called for a recount by hand of
vote tabulations in four counties and signaled Gore's
support for a court fight to overturn results in Palm
Beach County.
Bush campaign chairman Don Evans
accused the Gore camp of risking serious harm to
America's system of government.
"The Democrats who are
politicizing and distorting these events risk doing so
at the expense of our democracy," he said.
"Our democratic process calls for
a vote on election day. It does not call for us to
continue voting until someone likes the outcome."
Gore's representatives, he said, knew
of the controversial Palm Beach County ballots long
before the election and approved them back then.
Bush went ahead yesterday with
planning a presidential transition, prompting calls of
arrogance from the Democrats.
His campaign threatened to demand
automatic recounts in Wisconsin, Iowa and New Mexico,
narrowly won by Gore, if the vice-president did not
relent.
Several lawsuits were filed by Palm
Beach County residents complaining that their vote was
unfairly nullified.
Andre Fladell, of Palm Beach, Fla.,
was among those who are suing for a recount over what he
called a confusing ballot. "I got a crossword
puzzle with some configurations no one had ever told me
about," he said.
Once a winner is declared, the loser
will inevitably call for the citizens of the United
States to rally around the new president.
But the words "stolen
election" or "illegitimate leader" will
almost certainly be tossed about by some of the
defeated.
Gore, Clinton's hand-picked successor,
would face an enraged Congress dominated by Republicans.
Bush would be hard-pressed to deliver
on his campaign promise to be a "uniter, not a
divider."
RECOUNT TALLY AT PRESS TIME
Bush: 2,909,814
Gore: 2,909,585
TOP
