Fate of presidency now rests with Florida Supreme Court

It may all come down to the Florida Supreme Court.

The world waited yesterday while seven justices — all appointed by Democratic governors — heard arguments from the legal dream teams representing Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

The court must decide whether Florida's secretary of state, Republican appointee Katherine Harris, can certify the results of the election in the Sunshine State without including votes counted by hand.

The justices grilled the candidates' lawyers on several issues. Chief Justice Charles Wells was concerned that Florida not be left out of the Electoral College because of delays in counting. Other justices asked whether hand counts in a limited number of Florida counties would be unfair to voters in counties where ballots were counted only by machine.

The hearing revolved around Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties — three mostly Democratic districts with more than 1.5 million votes cast. For Gore to win the case, the court will have to allow election officials a wide range of discretion in determining voters' intent and will have to force the state to include hand recount numbers in the official tally.

There was no indication yesterday of when the justices might reach a decision.

While court was in session, hundreds of election workers counted ballots by hand in the three Democratic counties. Supporters of both Bush and Gore had expected those hand counts would yield significant gains for the vice president, but so far the totals have changed very little.

With overseas absentee ballots counted, Bush's official lead now stands at 930 votes. If current manual recount results were included in the official count, Gore would gain 127 votes, leaving Bush with a lead of 803.

While the nation waited on Florida, in New Jersey one state official took it upon himself yesterday to try to be sure that the Garden State would never host the electoral circus that has sprung up in Tallahassee.

State Sen. Joseph Kyrillos (R-Monmouth) said yesterday that he will draft legislation to drop New Jersey's winner-take-all system of allocating electoral votes.

Under the Kyrillos plan, the state would award electoral votes by congressional district. A presidential candidate would receive one vote for each New Jersey congressional district won, and the candidate who won the most votes in the state would grab the remaining two electoral votes corresponding to the two U.S. Senate seats.

(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)