The prospect of the US presidential election being fought out in court loomed larger Saturday as rivals George W. Bush and Al Gore reportedly weighed steps each hoped would tilt the vote in his favor.
As workers began recounting votes in the pivotal southern state of Florida, new questions were also raised about the tally in other states, raising further the specter of a protracted battle for the White House.
Texas Governor George W. Bush has filed a lawsuit to block a manual count of presidential election votes in Florida, former secretary of state James Baker said Saturday.
The move marks a strategic turnaround for the Bush camp, which had, since the election last Tuesday, cautioned against taking the historic presidential plebiscite into the courts.
Around six million votes were cast in Florida and an unofficial tally following an initial recount gave Bush a lead of a mere 327 votes in the state.
An official recount figure has been held up due to unresolved issues in Palm Beach County, one of 67 counties in Florida.
Those issues include the invalidation of 19,000 ballots, which were thrown out, officials said, because either two presidential candidates were selected, or none was.
Palm Beach County was regarded as a bastion of support for Gore, who is anxious to ensure that all the ballots cast there are closely reexamined, by hand if necessary.
Baker insisted Friday that the scrutiny and re-scrutiny of the ballot in Florida could not go on much longer.
"The vote here in Florida was very close, but when it was counted Governor Bush was the winner," Baker told reporters in Tallahassee, the Florida state capital.
"For the good of the country and for the sake of our standing in the world, the campaigning should end and the business of an orderly transition should begin."
While many within the Democratic Party support Gore's continuing fight for the presidency, some influential party members warned Friday that the battle could backfire and said excessive litigation should be avoided.
"At some point you have to acknowledge that life is unfair and move on," The New York Times quoted one unnamed Democratic Party fundraiser as saying.
Senator Robert Torricelli, another influential party figure, said: "There needs to be some understanding of the bounds of conduct.
"The proper bounds of this is that this should be settled with the counting of the ballots or there will be collateral attacks ... and no one will succeed and the American people will have short patience," he said.
In the meantime, President Bill Clinton appealed to Americans to be patient, four days after elections failed to determine his successor.
"The people have spoken," Clinton said in his weekly radio address.
"The important thing for all of us to remember now is that a process for resolving the discrepancies and the challenges to the election is in motion. The rest of us need to be patient and wait for the results." – (AFP)
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