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U.S. Supreme Court Sends Case Back To Florida, Judge Rejects Gore Vote Challenge
WASHINGTON & TALLAHASSEE, Florida (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Florida judge on Monday denied Democrat Al Gore’s entire challenge to the state's presidential election results that certified George W. Bush as the winner, including a request for a hand recount of thousands of disputed ballots
Finding that they had not presented any evidence to support their case, Leon County Circuit Court Judge Sanders Sauls rejected every allegation presented by Gore’s lawyers contesting the results from the November 7th election.
"The court finds that the plaintiffs have failed to carry the requisite burden of proof," Sauls said, reading his decision to a packed courtroom and carried live on U.S. television networks.
Sauls also said the count found no "illegality, dishonesty, gross negligence, improper influence, coercion or fraud in the balloting and counting processes."
Gore's legal team filed an immediate appeal of the decision.
Lead Gore attorney David Boies said he believed Judge Sauls had erred when he concluded Gore had failed to prove his case for the recount of thousands of disputed ballots.
"This ruling comes without the judge having looked at a single ballot," Boies said. "The ballots ... were the best evidence of the voters' intent."
Asked whether the justices would look at the case later Monday, Florida Supreme Court spokesman Craig Waters said: “The court will not take any further action tonight.”
The Florida Supreme Court told both Gore and Bush lawyers to present new briefs Tuesday.
Sauls' move came a few hours after the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington ruled that Florida's highest court should reconsider a decision to allow late hand recounts in the disputed U.S. presidential elections and dealt a severe blow to Gore's efforts to overturn Florida's certification of Bush as the winner of that southeastern state's 25 Electoral College votes in the November 7th election.
The U.S. Supreme Court, ruling on a Bush appeal, said it was unsure how the Florida Supreme Court reached its decision to extend the deadline for the certification of the state's votes to take new tallies into consideration.
"The judgment of the Supreme Court of Florida is therefore vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion," the justices ruled.
Gore believes a hand recount of more than 12,000 disputed ballots from Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties would give him the U.S. presidency by reversing Bush's razor-thin lead in Florida. Bush was 930 votes ahead, according to results on November 18 and had a 537-vote lead in the November 26 outcome that included manual recounts in parts of the state.
Responding to the U.S. Supreme Courts ruling sending the matter for reconsideration back to Florida, Waters said, "The U.S. Supreme Court is the highest court in the land. We do not ignore what they tell us."
"The decisive battle is now before the Florida state Supreme Court," Boies noted. "They won, we lost. We are appealing. This will be resolved by the Florida Supreme Court and I think that will be the end of the battle."
Gore's legal team does not view the U.S. Supreme Court decision as a blow to their side. "The Florida Supreme Court decision has not been reversed," Boies said, "it has been sent back to have them explain it."
And Republicans say they're not celebrating. "We don't want to jump to any conclusions," a Bush campaign official told CNN.
Bush said he was grateful for the U.S. Supreme Court decision and believes he won the election, but added that he was not prepared to say Gore should concede the presidential race.
However, James Baker III, point man for the Bush campaign in the Florida dispute, said the Republicans believe they won, and he added that any future action by the Florida court "will be subject to U.S. Supreme Court review."
"... From our standpoint, at least, it was a win," reiterated Baker.
As to why Sauls ruled against the second recount, the Florida judge said, "In this case, there is no credible statistical evidence and no other competent substantial evidence to establish ... a reasonable probability that the results of the statewide election ... would be different from the result which has been certified by the state elections canvassing commission."
Should the Florida high court refuse to accept or deny the Gore appeal, his bid for the White House will effectively be over.
However, there are now three separate cases set for trial in the Leon County Circuit Court that could invalidate several thousand absentee ballots in three counties, actions that if ordered by the judges would give Gore the edge.
The Gore campaign is not a party to any of those three suits.
In one suit that begins Wednesday, a Democratic activist who is challenging absentee ballots cast in Seminole County is bringing a case. The suit seeks to throw out up to 15,000 absentee votes, most of them for Bush, on the grounds that Republicans were improperly allowed to fill in missing data on absentee ballot applications.
A Democratic voter seeking to disqualify 9,800 absentee ballots cast in Republican-leaning Martin County, which would give the vice president a net gain of more than 2,800 votes, filed another suit.
A majority of Americans want disputed ballots in Florida counted by hand and the state's Republican-controlled Legislature to stay out of the presidential election, a survey published Monday found. But a Washington Post-ABC News poll also found that 57% of those surveyed believe Gore should concede the election and let Bush assume the presidency.
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