Saturday Morning News

Bush OKs Court Filing to Stop Florida Hand Count

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, back to our top story once again, election 2000 and the presidential race that doesn't seem to want to end. It seems as if the earliest it might be concluded would be next Friday, when overseas ballots would be counted in Florida, absentee ballots, which are coming in and would be counted and a decision might be made in Florida by them.

Meanwhile, this morning hand recounts under way in several counties of Florida. Our Bill Hemmer is in Tallahassee tracking that whole situation.

Bill, what's the latest?

BILL HEMMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, good morning to you. Now, day four of this ongoing saga here. Want to get to the numbers right now, the official numbers through the State of Florida that came out last evening. The State of Florida is saying of 66 of 67 counties reporting, George W. Bush leads Al Gore, the Vice President, by 961 votes.

Now, however, this does not include the complete total for absentee ballots from overseas and it does not include the recount for Palm Beach County, the source of major contention for the past several days.

Now, the Associated Press is also reporting a tally. They're saying 327 votes with all counties included is the margin of difference between George W. Bush and Al Gore. It should also be pointed out that the state has said on Tuesday they will give official numbers, released on Tuesday again, for all 67 counties.

But again, you're going to have to wait until next Friday until the ultimate official decision is released with those absentee ballots from overseas.

Getting word this morning also out of Austin, Texas, through the Associated Press that George W. Bush, the Texas Governor, has given James Baker permission to pursue possibly an injunction, an injunction that would be filed in court, specifically in Palm Beach County, if necessary, to stop a recount of the hand count, the Bush campaign expressing concern that just like machines may make mistakes, so, too, can human beings.

It is not clear where this will go, certainly, at this point. But what is clear is that the legal wrangling has continued on its course thus far.

As for today, this Saturday, it's a federal holiday weekend. Very few people here in the state capital. It is said they have a skeleton crew upstairs working different areas of this current story right now.

But outside of Tallahassee, in four different parts of the state, Volusia County, Broward County, Palm Beach County and Miami/Dade, we do know this today, of those four counties, two have a hand cut, in Voilusha and Palm Beach County. On Monday, Broward will start a fraction of its hand recount and it's possible also either on Monday or Tuesday or the first part of next week that Dade County in Florida may also do a similar thing.

We'll watch it throughout the day. More coming up in about 20 minutes here live in Tallahassee.

Back now to Atlanta and Miles and Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, thanks, Bill.

And before we go to John Zarrella in West Palm Beach, we want to check the pulse today of the two candidates, who still seem stuck in the campaign mode.

First, let's go to the Bush camp in Austin, Texas, where CNN's Tony Clark is standing by. Hi, Tony.

TONY CLARK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Kyra.

I'm outside the Bush campaign headquarters. We're hoping to talk to some of the campaign officials a little bit later this morning. As for Governor Bush, he left last night for his ranch near Crawford, Texas.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): George W. Bush plans a working weekend away from the cameras and crowds that have surrounded the Governor's mansion. At his ranch, he and running mate Dick Cheney will continue mapping out a possible Bush administration.

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We believe that the responsible course of action is to be well prepared. It's in our nation's best interest that should I assume the presidency, that this is an administration that is planned well and is prepared to assume the highest office of the land, and it will be. And we will be prepared.

CLARK: While Bush was planning for the presidency with his economic and international affairs advisors, the job of securing it for him was left to former Secretary of State James Baker. Baker is Bush's point man for the Florida recount.

JAMES BAKER, OBSERVER FOR BUSH CAMPAIGN: It is important, ladies and gentlemen, that there be some finality to the election process. What if we insisted on recounts in other states that today are very, very close?

CLARK: In fact, the Bush campaign and Republican Committee personnel are in New Mexico, Oregon, Iowa and Wisconsin taking a close look at Vice President Gore's narrow margin of victory in those states and threatening their own ballot box battle.

BAKER: If we keep being put in the position of having to respond to recount after recount after recount of the same ballots, then we just can't sit on our hands and we will be forced to do what might be in our best personal interests.

CLARK: For now, it is only a threat. The make or break prize remains Florida with its 25 electoral votes and the final tally there is still days away and with it perhaps the outcome of the election.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: That report from CNN's Tony Clark in Austin, Texas.

Let's turn our sights now to Washington, where Vice President Al Gore and his team have returned to. CNN's Patti Davis is there with the latest. And Patti, the Vice President seeming to go out of his way not to be carrying too much about all of this, playing a little touch football, trying to be awfully causal.

PATTI DAVIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's true. And last night he went to a banquet, a football banquet for his son here in Washington, D.C. His son is a high school student. No availability to the press at that event either.

So he is keeping very mum on this topic and letting his aides really go out front. In fact, the last top aide, you might call him, his vice presidential running mate Joe Lieberman, came out last night in an interview and said there's absolutely no way that they as a team are going to concede this election before Friday because that's when those overseas ballots, those absentee ballots should be in and will be counted.

Lieberman said, in fact, they're not trying to prolong this in any way. He said, "We think there may be big changes in the hand recount" that is beginning in three of four counties in which they requested it. He said that they just want to make sure that there are no clouds hanging over this election process that wouldn't be fair to the American people -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: So, the possibility, then of court action looms, Patti. What is the Gore camp saying about that? It seems as if the rhetoric was toned down a bit as the week wore on.

DAVIS: It does seem that it has been toned down a bit. In fact, at the beginning of the week we had Chairman Daley, the Chairman of the Gore campaign, Bill Daley, saying that they were considering all of their legal options. Yesterday, he's toned that down somewhat, saying that their legal experts "feel strongly" that the ballot used election day in Palm Beach County was unlawful. A little bit of a toned down response. We don't, we do not have a response yet today from the Gore campaign to Bush, possible Bush action trying to stop or stop further recounts in the State of Florida. However, the "Washington Post" in its editorial page took the Bush campaign to task for that today, saying that that that's not in the nation's interests. That same newspaper had taken the Gore campaign to task yesterday about them considering their legal options, saying that that, perhaps, is not in the nation's best interests, that, in fact, these two gentlemen do have their personal constitutional rights here, but they should, as public officials, maybe be considering the public's, the overall public well being -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, that's CNN's Patti Davis live from Washington. We'll be checking in with her later. Thanks very much.

PHILLIPS: All right, there were actually two recounts today in Florida, one requested by Democrats, the other by Republicans, which means an enormous amount of attention today on the sites where those recounts are taking place.

CNN's John Zarrella is in West Palm Beach with the details on this story. John, from court action to vote counts and recounts, you've got your hands full this morning.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We certainly do and we've had it for the last few days and it promises to continue on into next week without doubt. Now, right behind me, in the room right behind me, in less than an hour now, Palm Beach County election officials are expected to begin a hand recount requested by the Democrats of three selected precincts, about 4,300 ballots.

At the same time, they will begin a machine recount in another room next to that, next to this room, requested by the Republicans, a machine recount of all of the ballots in Palm Beach County.

A couple of interesting things that the Democrats are looking for in these selected precincts that they have asked for. There were apparently about 10,000 ballots that were not punched for presidential candidate at all and many of them came out of these selected precincts. The Democrats think there may be something funky with the machine in those precincts. They want to make sure. If they can just get a few votes out of those 10,000 that didn't get punched at all, it could make the difference.

On top of all that, of course, we know there's 19,000 other ballots that were punched twice for a candidate and there's an enormous amount of votes that went to Pat Buchanan because of the way the butterfly ballot was laid out.

So there are, it's all about numbers here in Palm Beach County and it's really coming down to a number here, a number there that could sway the vote.

So this is a very, very key recount because if it does show anomalies, Kyra, that could mean the Democrats would go and then ask for a recount, a hand recount of all of the ballots here in Palm Beach County. So we will be looking very, very closely at what happens today here in Palm Beach County, expected to begin about nine o'clock. We should have some results late this evening or this afternoon, six, seven, eight o'clock.

This is John Zarrella reporting live from Palm Beach County -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Thanks, John -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: If Americans ever took their right to vote for granted, this election may have changed that forever. In a town meeting yesterday in Palm Beach, CNN's Jeff Greenfield got an earful from local citizens who feel they have not been well served by the election process. Here's some of what they said.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED CITIZEN: I also feel that I believe, as Al Gore said, I think it was the Wednesday after the election, that I believe in the process. I believe we should give the process a chance and I find it a little bit disturbing that right immediately I hear sentiment that we're going to bring the legal eagles in and there's going to be big lawsuits if things don't turn out the way they want.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So basically we may have almost unanimity on this, I shouldn't say this, but the lawyers bother you when they show up (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?

UNIDENTIFIED CITIZEN: The lawyers bother me and...

GREENFIELD: I understand. Lawyers bother a lot of people.

UNIDENTIFIED CITIZEN: A lot of lawyers, yeah.

GREENFIELD: There's someone else who has a comment, I think, over here, about your general reaction to the story that's been playing out for the last three days. Sir?

UNIDENTIFIED CITIZEN: Yes, I honestly believe that the process that we're going through now has to be rectified and I honestly believe that the constitution has to be upheld. So by doing the right thing and getting the vote process the way it should be done, everything will come to a satisfactory end.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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