Even as Americans anxiously awaited the outcome of a vote recount in Florida, election officials prepared for yet another tallying of ballots seen as decisive in determining who will be the next US president.
Painstaking, manual recounts were to be conducted in three of Florida's 67 counties starting on Saturday.
Authorities already had conducted a statewide recount in Florida after ruling that Tuesday's presidential elections were too close to call.
While the official results of the count were not immediately announced, unofficial figures give Republican George W. Bush a razor-thin, 327-vote edge over Democrat Al Gore.
Whoever wins Florida will get 25 electoral votes, which would likely give him a winning margin, with Bush already holding 260 electoral votes, and Gore 246. A candidate needs 270 of the 538 votes to win the presidency.
Bush and his campaign all but declared victory on Friday and accused the Democrats of dragging out the process, while Gore's team insisted the outcome still hung in the balance.
Bush adviser James Baker urged Gore to "put the country first" and stop "unduly" delaying the electoral process.
"It appears that the Gore campaign is attempting to unduly prolong the country's national presidential election through endless challenges to the results of the vote here in Florida," he said.
But Gore's campaign insisted there could be no decision until the recounts are completed and overseas absentee ballots are all accounted for.
"When a president takes office on January 20 of 2001, that president should have emerged from an election process over which there no clouds," said Gore's running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman.
Several lawsuits have been filed, amid claims voters were confused by the layout of the ballot in Palm Beach, which had Gore's name directly below Bush's, but the punch hole for Reform party Pat Buchanan's in between. More than 19,000 ballots were discounted in Palm Beach county because they were punched twice.
"This is an orderly process, we have no reason to slow it down," said Gore adviser Warren Christopher.
Baker and Christopher, both former secretaries of state, were dispatched to Florida's capital Tallahassee by the two campaigns to monitor the recount.
Bush, speaking in Texas, said he was readying a transition.
"I'm in the process of planning, in a responsible way, a potential administration," Bush said.
"Should the verdict that has been announced thus far be confirmed, we'll be ready. And I think that's what the country needs to know, that this administration will be ready to assume office and be prepared to lead."
Gore's campaign chairman William Daley insisted, however, that it was premature to declare a winner. "Calls for the declaration of a victor before all the votes are accurately tabulated are premature," he said.
The final outcome cannot be announced before November 17, the cut-off date for receiving absentee ballots. Baker pointed out that those votes, mainly from US military forces stationed abroad, traditionally went to the Republican candidate.
With a long wait in sight, some voters openly expressed their impatience outside the Florida state government center in Tallahassee, where one protester held up a banner that read: "When will this long national nightmare be over?” -- TALLAHASSEE, Florida (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
