M A I N   N E W S

Fresh hand count in Florida

WASHINGTON, Nov 11 (PTI) — Officials began fresh hand count of votes in the crucial Florida state as more complications arose in the process of deciding who will be the next US President, with Republican candidate George W. Bush threatening to approach the Supreme Court to halt a similar recount in West Palm Beach.

As the world settled to a prolonged suspense over the final outcome, officials began tallying votes by hand in Volusia county of Florida whose 25 electoral votes will decide who will occupy the White House for the next four years.

Amid the wrangling, it became increasingly clear that the winner could not be declared before a week.

Media reports said the state-wide count, ordered because of the narrow margin in Tuesday’s election, showed that Mr Bush had a 327 vote lead over Democrat Vice-President Al Gore.

But the official result, with 66 of the 67 counties counted gave Mr Gore a 961 vote advantage.

Mr Bush was planning to take legal action to block the manual count of ballots by some Florida voters.

The Washington Post reported that Mr Bush had authorised former Secretary of State James Baker to seek Supreme Court order to block the count by hand.

Voting officials were preparing to scrutinise ballots in selected precincts of Palm Beach county and Broward county on Monday. Miami-Dade county officials were to decide on Tuesday whether to initiate a recount.

The official tally was yet to include ballots from West Palm Beach, the most contentious of the counties, where 19,000 votes were declared invalid.

Several lawsuits have been filed in Palm Beach, amid claims that voters were confused by the layout of the ballot, which had Mr Gore’s name directly below Bush’s, but the punch hold for Reform Party Pat Buchanan’s inbetween.

As the painstaking, vote-by-vote recounts were under way, officials said an official result could not be announced by November 17, the cut-off date for overseas ballots to be in.

Whoever wins Florida will get 25 electoral votes, which would likely give him a winning margin, with Mr Bush already holding 260 electoral votes, and Mr Gore 246. A candidate needs 270 of the 538 votes to win the presidency.

Mr Bush and his campaign all but declared victory yesterday and accused the Democrats of dragging out the process, while Mr Gore’s team insisted the outcome still hung in the balance.

Mr Bush said in Texas that he was readying a transition.

“I am in the process of planning, in a responsible way, a potential administration,” Mr Bush said.

“Should the verdict that has been announced thus far be confirmed, we will be ready. And I think that is what the country needs to know, that this administration will be ready to assume office and be prepared to lead,” Mr Bush said.

Mr Gore’s campaign chairman William Daley said it was premature to declare a winner.

Meanwhile, Mr Bush has taken lead over Mr Gore in New Mexico, though officials of democratic and republican parties showed different tallies. While Republicans said Bush led by 17 votes, Democrats said the lead was only of four votes.

Clinton asks Americans to be patient

WASHINGTON, Nov 11 (Reuters) — President Bill Clinton today urged Americans to be patient over the process for determining the winner in this year’s drawn-out presidential election, and said the country would stand by the outcome as one.

Mr Clinton said in his weekly radio address that the continuing vote-recounting process in Florida, which most likely will determine whether Republican George W. Bush or Democrat Al Gore wins the presidency, showed the strength of the US democracy.

“The important thing for all of us to remember now is that a process for resolving the discrepancies and challenges to the election is in motion. The rest of us need to be patient and wait for the results,’’ Mr Clinton said.

He congratulated Bush and Mr Gore on their campaign. “Regardless of the outcome, we will come together as a nation as we always do,’’ he said.

Mr Clinton pledged that the country’s business would continue, including his plans to leave on Sunday on a week-long trip to Asia that includes a visit to Vietnam.

The radio address was recorded yesterday for broadcast today.

“The events unfolding in Florida are not a sign of the division of our nation, but of the vitality of our debate, which will be resolved by the vibrancy of our constitution and laws,’’ Mr Clinton said.

Election officials are recounting ballots in Florida, where some voters complained of intimidation or other irregularities in Tuesday’s election and where Gore supporters in Palm Beach county complained of casting their votes improperly due to confusing ballots.