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No Decision Likely Thursday On Gore Appeal As Judges Consider Critical Absentee Ballot Cases
contributions by Matthew Lee
TALLAHASSEE (AFP) - A ruling from Florida's Supreme Court on Al Gore's challenge to the election results in the state is unlikely to come Thursday, a court official said here.
The seven justices who heard Gore's appeal earlier in the day had all left for the day, the security official said at around 6:15 pm (2315 GMT).
Legal analysts said a decision would be handed down swiftly after the justice heard 60 minutes of oral arguments from lawyers representing Gore and his rival for the presidency George W. Bush.
Democrat Gore was appealing a lower court's decision to throw out his challenge to Bush's slender victory in the state that holds the key to the White House.
Meanwhile in Leon County, two judges on Thursday began deliberations in controversial lawsuits seeking to invalidate thousands of absentee ballots cast in the state's disputed presidential race that could hand the presidency to Gore.
Leon County Circuit Court judges Terry Lewis and Nikki Clark retired to chambers after two days of lengthy testimony marked by vehement objections and numerous motions for dismissal by lawyers for Bush.
Lewis said his written ruling whether to nullify 10,000 ballots in Martin County could come by noon (1700 GMT) on Friday.
Clark did not specify when she would release her decision whether to toss 15,000 ballots in Seminole County.
In both cases, Democratic activists allege Republicans illegally tampered absentee ballot applications rejected because they failed to provide certain information. They also allege collusion of local officials.
The Democrats who filed the suits contend the actions of two Republican officials mitigate the validity of the votes, most of which were cast for Bush.
If either case succeeds, Bush's razor-thin, 537-vote statewide lead would evaporate, making Gore the winner in Florida and, by extension, the 43rd president of the United States.
The Democrats say Seminole county election supervisor Sandra Goard allowed Republicans to come into her office to fix the applications and allowed them access to non-public areas, presenting the opportunity for fraud.
"It is a great vehicle to destroy the integrity of the process, what was done was a clear violation of the law," said Gerald Richman, the lawyer for plaintiff Harry Jacobs.
In the Martin case, the Democrats contend election supervisor Peggy Robbins allowed Republicans to take incomplete absentee ballot applications out of her office in order to add the required information.
"This was an unlawful vote, an illegal vote and one that needs to be corrected by the court," lead lawyer Edward Stafman said, maintaining that tainted ballot applications should nullify the votes.
The Bush team, however, blasted both complaints as without merit, shuttling between courtrooms to defend the cases.
They said both deserved to be dismissed because any improprieties, even if they existed, were "hypertechnical" in nature and did not warrant the nullification of votes that could change the White House race.
The Bush camp maintained that even if Goard and Robbins had done wrong, to invalidate the ballots would be "draconian" and would violate federal laws forbidding the disenfranchisement of voters for irregularities in the registration process.
In addition, they maintain state law allows votes to be discarded only if the actual ballots, not the applications, are tainted.
"There is no evidence in this case that ballots were compromised and if ballots were not compromised, the election was not compromised," lead Bush lawyer Barry Richard told Judge Clark in the Seminole case.
Gore has not signed onto the complaints though he has expressed interest in them.
Gore supporters bringing the Seminole and Martin cases made no secret of their desire to help the vice president.
"I hope it is a good chance for Al Gore and I hope we can stay in there and I hope we can win," Richman told reporters.
Richman and Stafman both conceded that tossing out all the absentee ballots in the two counties was extreme and proposed alternate schemes in which votes could be subtracted from the total in proportion to how they might have been cast.
Statisticians hired by the plaintiffs in both cases offered proposals - which would eliminate Bush's current lead - to discount 637 votes for Bush in Martin County. They suggested 1,717 votes for Bush and 213 for Gore be annulled in Seminole County.
Rejecting the proposals as unreliable and irrelevant, the Republican attorneys argued neither set of plaintiffs proved the absentee ballots in question were cast for candidates other than those chosen by voters.
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