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Florida Not To Extend Deadline For Recount
WASHINGTON (IslamOnline) - Florida’s Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, declared that the deadline for the recount will not be extended and that all counties should submit their count by 5:00 p.m. Tuesday or else their count would be ignored.
Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore’s team, headed by former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and William Daley, Gore’s campaign manager, objected to the Tuesday deadline with Christopher stating it was arbitrary and unreasonable. The team said they would contest it in court.
Explaining reasons for not extending the deadline, Harris, a Republican, said, “The electoral process is a balance between the desire of each individual voter to have his or her intended vote recorded and the right of the public to a clear, final result within a reasonable time.”
The Gore team was also looking into whether the decision was influenced by Republican state Governor Jeb Bush favoring requests of his presidential candidate brother, George W.
But another member of the state election canvassing board, Agriculture commissioner Bob Crawford, a Democrat, defended Harris' decision. “We looked very closely to see if there is any discretion. There is no discretion,” he said.
In Volusia County, one of four Florida counties where recounts are in progress, election officials said they expected to file their own lawsuit Monday to extend the deadline beyond 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) Tuesday.
Gore won Volusia County Tuesday night, but his team said that a hand recount would give him even more votes among the county’s 184,018 ballots.
Meanwhile, at a news conference early Sunday, Palm Beach County election officials said the sample manual recount of four precincts - one in Palm Beach Gardens, two in Boca Raton and one in Delray Beach - resulted in 33 additional votes for Gore and 14 more for Bush, a 19-vote swing in the Vice President’s favor.
The limited hand count was intended to spot-check votes that ballot-counting machines misreported or discarded, MSNBC reported.
In a second full machine recount of ballots cast in Palm Beach County - the third tally of those ballots by machine, including the Election Night count - Gore gained 36 votes and Bush lost three.
Though the Tuesday deadline does not apply to them, counting of Florida residents’ absentee ballots still remains outstanding. They should be received no later than Friday to be counted.
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