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Gore Camp Urges Bush To Withdraw Lawsuit As More Ballots Found And Others Disqualified
WASHINGTON (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore on Saturday called on Republican rival George W. Bush to withdraw a lawsuit which seeks to block a hand recount of votes in Florida.
"We call upon the Bush campaign to withdraw the litigation they have filed today," former secretary of state and top Gore legal adviser Warren Christopher told journalists here.
The lawsuit was filed earlier Saturday to block a manual recount of some of the 5.8 million ballots in Florida.
Speaking at his ranch near Waco, Texas, earlier Saturday, Bush said he would be willing to withdraw the lawsuit, "depending upon Vice President Gore's campaign's decisions."
Florida carries 25 electoral votes in the Electoral College, enough to give Bush or Gore the 270 electors needed to win the presidency. Bush currently holds 246 electoral votes and Gore 262.
Christopher indicated that the Gore campaign had yet to determine what they would do if the recount gave the state to Bush.
Asked whether the vice president would concede the election, he said: "That decision has not been made at the present time. As we mentioned before, there are other options that we have before us and we're going to hold on to those options for the present time."
Gore campaign chairman William Daley, speaking alongside Christopher, said he was sure there would be no need for concession.
"We strongly believe at the end of this process that Al Gore will win the Florida vote," he said.
Unofficial returns gave Bush a wafer-thin 327-vote edge in an automated vote recount in the state that will decide the U.S. presidency. Official results from this automated recount are not expected until late next week.
The manual recount of votes cast in four Florida counties was requested by the Gore campaign.
In response, in the event Bush loses his tenuous hold on Florida’s electoral votes, Republican Party leaders are gearing up to demand recounts in at least four states that are still either not “called” or where Gore’s margin of victory is small.
The Bush campaign stated it would demand recounts Oregon (seven electoral votes), Wisconsin (11), Iowa (7) and New Mexico (5), where Bush recently won by 17 votes in a state that was “called” for Gore as official results were released.
Republicans are also downplaying the possibility of announcing irregularities they discovered in both voting and Gore campaign tactics in the hope that Bush is declared the winner in Florida.
Seemingly providing the Gore camp with more ammunition however, Miami police said Saturday that two boxes holding uncounted ballots had been found and were being held by them, prior to being handed over to the electoral authorities.
The police said in a statement that one of the boxes was found late Friday at Miami's Sheridan Hotel, where hotel security had called the police. The hotel had been used as a polling station in Tuesday's election.
The second box was found Saturday at the Good News Little River Baptist Church, also in Miami and which had likewise been used as a polling station. Church officials called the police department when they found the box, the police statement said.
The police themselves sealed the two boxes, according to the statement.
Also, about 26,000 ballots with more than one presidential candidate or no candidate marked were disqualified in Florida’s solidly Republican Duval County and never counted, election officials said Saturday.
Bush carried Duval County by more than 44,000 votes.
Officials say there is no way to know if the nullified ballots affected the race between Bush and Gore.
Under Florida law, a manual recount must be requested within 72 hours of an election, too late for the discovery of these missing ballots.
Democratic party officials in Florida stated they were not informed of 27,000 nullified votes, but of only 200-300. Had they known, officials stated they would have definitely requested a manual recount in the county.
"I don't know what is going on, but it rises to the level of hanky-panky," Mike Langton, a senior Florida Gore campaign official said.
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