EST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Hundreds of election workers in three Florida counties prepared yesterday to hand count enormous stacks of ballots after a Florida official demanded earlier in the day that all the counts be completed by 5 p.m. today or be ignored in favor of the machine tallies that gave the race to George W. Bush.
Yesterday evening, a judge in Tallahassee heard arguments from Bush and Al Gore lawyers over whether to extend the 5 p.m. deadline. He will rule this morning.
The looming deadline was felt most acutely in this manicured seaside town as helicopters whirred constantly overhead, phalanxes of lawyers charged in and out of courtrooms, and wrangling county officals shouted one another down in front of a sea of cameras.
It is likely that a smaller hand count of votes in Volusia County, to the north of Palm Beach County, will be completed by today but those in Palm Beach County and Miami-Dade County are doubtful. If Secretary of State Katherine Harris's ruling holds, the machine counts in these two counties might become the final tally.
The clash between Florida's political parties unfolded yesterday after Harris issued her 5 p.m. ultimatum. Minutes later, just across town, the Palm Beach County Election Canvassing Board voted to start a manual recount of all 462,657 ballots cast here. Last week, it took election workers 12 hours to hand count just 1 percent of these, but county officials said they could finish by week's end.
Harris's demand met legal opposition from the Gore campaign in Volusia County, where Democratic lawyers asked a judge to allow completion of the count of some 184,000 votes there by extending the deadline. The Palm Beach Canvassing Board directed its lawyers to wage a similar legal fight here to gain time.
''We have authorized our attorneys to do whatever is necessary to assure the votes of all of our residents are counted,'' said Charles Burton, a county judge and one of three members of the canvassing board.
Republicans said the earlier, partial recount in Palm Beach County was unfair, chaotic and possibly prejudiced by the Democratic members of the canvassing board. The presence of chads, the small pieces of punch card ballots, on the floor showed that mishandling of the ballots could potentially produce new votes, Republicans said outside the Palm Beach County government center.
In Broward County, just north of Miami, Gore recieved 43 additional votes after a machine recount of ballots last week. The county Democratic Party asked for a hand count. A hearing was held, and the canvassing board decided not to hand count votes because it said there were no significant errors in the machine count. Some Democrats on the board are planning to challange the decision.
Two hundred miles north in Volusia County, a single precinct where computer errors led to a miscount was targeted for a hand count. That was later expanded to include all of the 184,000 votes cast in the county. By yesterday morning two-thirds of the ballots were counted and officials said the job would be done by today.
By contrast, Miami-Dade County has yet to start. That county's canvassing board was scheduled to meet this morning to fashion a plan to hand count ballots. But if the 5 p.m. deadline holds it is unlikely it will be able to complete the task.
And Palm Beach County is expected to start its count today, just hours before the deadline.
Yesterday, lawyers for the Bush campaign called for an emergency hearing in a West Palm Beach court. They attempted to move a class action lawsuit by five county residents to another court near Tallahassee, and argued that a judge's decision last week to prohibit the county from submitting its votes would be overturned. Palm Beach County votes cannot be submitted to the state until the issue of the butterfly ballot, which may have confused some Gore supporters into voting for Reform Party candidate Patrick J. Buchanan, is fully litigated.
However, the court arguments never got off the ground. In keeping with the raw political fighting that has enveloped this state, a lawyer representing one Palm Beach County resident asked Judge Stephen A. Rapp to remove himself from the case.
Henry Handler, the attorney, accused Rapp of making comments, at an unrelated trial last Wednesday, that he would ''make sure the Democrats are run out of the White House.''
Rapp denied the contention but stepped down nonetheless. Another judge will hear the case today.
A few blocks from the sprawling postmodern courthouse, thousands of Democrats at a rally demanded a revote. Led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the demonstrators disbanded early after a group of about 100 Republicans heckled the speakers, screaming ''Go Home Jesse'' and ''Bush-Cheney.''
Shortly after, the cat-and-mouse game resumed, with the Gore supporters gathering again at an outdoor amphitheater nearby, holding signs that read ''George W: You Can't Steal Our Votes'' and ''The Ballot Was illegal.''
