Battle goes to the U.S. Supreme Court

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, NOV. 23. The Bush campaign has appealed to the United States Supreme Court to bar the use of manually counted votes in the U.S. presidential election in Florida. The lawyers for the Texas Governor, Mr. George W. Bush, filed appeals seeking an urgent review.

``This is a case of utmost national importance involving the Constitution's most fundamental rights as exercised in the nation's most important election. The outcome of the election for the presidency of the United States may hang in the balance.''

Criticising the Florida Supreme Court order to include handcounted ballots in the final tally for certification, the Bush campaign called the vote-counting process ``selective, capricious and standardless''. The court ruling violated the equal protection clause, the due process clause and the first Amendment, it said. Earlier, Mr. Bush slammed the ruling saying, ``make no mistake, the court rewrote the law. It changed the rules, and it did so after the election was over.''

But the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court by the Bush camp asking the judges to hear the case and give a ruling by December 18 when States, on an individual basis, would have to tally the Electoral College votes, was not the main event on Wednesday.

The Republicans moved a State Circuit Court asking 13 counties with heavy military populations to recount the overseas ballots. According to one estimate, the 13 counties rejected some 650 ballots and the Bush campaign believes it was at the receiving end.

Mixed fortunes for Gore

For the Gore camp, it was a day of mixed fortunes. On the one hand was the ruling in Palm Beach county that ordered election officials to consider the ``dimpled'' ballots in the manual recount. On the other hand, the Miami-Dade county said it was stopping manual counting as it could not meet the new deadline. The Gore campaign was ``counting'' on the Miami-Dade county - largest in the State - especially in the 10,000 or so ballots that had been in clear dispute.

On Wednesday night, a State Appeals Court upheld the Miami-Dade county's decision to suspend the vote recount. The Gore campaign, which was expected to get hundreds of votes after the disputed ballots were checked, said it would move the Florida Supreme Court. When the counting was stopped, the U.S. Vice- President, Mr. Al Gore, had gained 157 votes. The ruling of the Florida Supreme Court has formally threatened to bring the State's Legislature into the act and angry Republican lawmakers said the court had over-reached itself and, in the process, cut into the functioning of the Government's legislative branch.

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