County judge rejects Gore's handcount request

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, DEC. 5. In a devastating setback to the Vice- President, Mr. Al Gore, in his battle for the presidency, the Leon county circuit court in Florida rejected the request to handcount some 14,000 ballots from two heavily Democratic counties in the State. The Gore legal team had argued that these ballots had enough votes for the Vice- President.

``There is no credible statistical evidence to support this claim,'' ruled the judge, Mr. Sanders Sauls. ``The evidence does not establish any illegality, dishonesty, gross negligence, improper influence, coercion or fraud in the balloting and the counting processes.'' The Gore campaign is again moving the Florida Supreme Court with the lead lawyer, Mr. David Boies, saying, ``They won, we lost, we are appealing.'' He added that the resolution by the State Supreme Court will be the end of the matter.

Mr. Sauls was quite blunt perhaps even ``dismissive'' of the Gore campaign's contentions. ``The court finds that the plaintiffs have failed to carry the requisite burden of proof and judgment shall be and hereby is entered that plaintiffs shall take nothing by this action and the defendants may go hence without delay.''

But the consensus has been that unlike the U.S. Supreme Court decision on Monday, the ruling of the Leon judge was definitive and precise. The impression is that the Florida Supreme Court is going to find it very hard to overturn the findings of the circuit court which had conducted an elaborate trial. Normally, an appeals court does not easily overturn trial court proceedings.

Quite independent of what is taking place in Tallahassee, the 11th circuit court of appeals in Atlanta will be hearing from the Bush campaign lawyers today on why handcounting must be deemed unconstitutional. The contention has been that a handcount amounts to stuffing the ballot box and hence the Court has an obligation to stop it.

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