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Gore-Bush fight goes to US Supreme Court

WASHINGTON, Dec 1 (AP) — the Florida presidential election war headed for a historic showdown in the US Supreme Court, where Mr George W Bush asked the judges to throw out the hand-counted tally that narrowed his lead over Vice-President Al Gore.

Florida’s highest court, Mr Bush’s lawyers said, “plainly rewrote the election laws.”

Mr Bush’s team hoped to convince the nation’s highest court that the late-counted votes were unlawfully added to the pivotal Florida totals, while Mr Gore’s attorneys were urging the nine judges to let those votes stand.

Even as the legal battle centred on the Supreme Court, Mr Bush and Mr Gore developed their transition strategies and skirmished in the courts of Florida. About 600,000 ballots from the Miami-Dade county were being hauled today to a Tallahassee courthouse — in case another recount is ordered — after nearly 500,000 ballots arrived there yesterday from the Palm Beach county in a banana-yellow rental truck.

Bush attorneys last night asked Circuit Judge n sanders Sauls to order an additional 1.2 million ballots brought in from the Volusia, Broward and Pinellas counties. The judge has not yet considered the request.

“We believe there were a number of illegal votes for Gore in those counties,” Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said.

The Gore legal team, which is contesting the Florida election that gave Mr Bush a 537-vote lead, filed an urgent plea with the Florida Supreme Court, asking that hand-counting of the ballots begin while Mr Sauls, who will hold a hearing tomorrow, decides whether the recounts could be added to Mr Gore’s totals. “There is no reason to delay counting ballots even one day,” the brief read.

The Bush legal team, in a motion with Mr Sauls yesterday, cited more than a dozen reasons why the judge should toss out Mr Gore’s contest. In the Republicans’ first formal response to the Democrats’ lawsuit, they claimed Mr Gore’s challenge was baseless because the real election wasn’t between the Texas Governor and the Vice-President, but between the separate groups of 25 Florida electors.