EST PALM BEACH, Fla. - The laborious hand counts in South Florida were grinding toward their conclusion last night, with the prospect of Al Gore's gaining the 930 votes he needs to win appearing dim.
With the recount finished in Broward and Palm Beach counties and suspended in Miami-Dade County until election officials meet this morning, the best hope for Gore rests with thousands of ballots with ''dimpled'' chads that election officials have yet to count.
In the unofficial tally released last night, Gore had gained only 129 votes in the three counties. In addition, Broward and Palm Beach counties had about 10,000 ballots, many of them with the controversial indentations, for their canvassing board members to rule on.
In Miami-Dade, which had netted 157 votes for Gore on Tuesday with about one-sixth of the county's precincts counted, election officials shut down the manual recount of the county's 654,000 votes, casting further doubt on the vice president's prospects. At the moment, those 157 votes are not likely to count, though the county requested that six votes for Gore be added from an earlier sample hand recount.
Lawyers for Gore appealed the decision, but a state Appeals Court denied the request last night. Democrats said they would appeal to the state Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, a judge in Palm Beach County handed Gore another legal victory. Circuit Judge Jorge Labarga said county election officials must review all ballots with dimpled chads.
The decision, however, didn't deviate much from a similar ruling the same judge made last week. Labarga reiterated that the county could not categorically exclude any ballots and must examine all.
''Since the will of the people is the paramount consideration, and the purpose of our election laws is to obtain a correct expression of the intent of the voters, that intention should be given effect,'' Labarga wrote in a 7-page ruling. ''Conversely, the canvassing board must reject any vote in which it cannot discern the intent of the voter.''
The ruling leaves the decision to count dimpled ballots up to the canvassing board's discretion, but Gore lawyers hailed Labarga's decision.
''The biggest difference [from Labarga's earlier ruling] is he gave them legal direction, citing specific cases,'' said Gore attorney Ben Kuehne. ''If they do it right, the difference could be hundreds, if not thousands, of votes.''
Still, election officials here believe the decision didn't change anything.
''I believe that is the process which we have been undertaking,'' said Judge Charles Burton, the chairman of the county's canvassing board, referring to officials' examination of all ballots. ''I'm not certain that there is anything additional this board needs to do.''
Democrats say the board has already denied Gore more than 300 votes so far because of dimpled ballots. And the Democrats feel that unless the board adopts a more liberal interpretation of which votes to count, they fear Gore will not overcome the 930-vote lead that Bush holds in a tally certified earlier by the Florida secretary of state.
In Broward, Gore's chief attorney, David Boies, asked the local election officials to accept all ballots with indentations. The three election officials are to meet this morning at a courthouse in Fort Lauderdale to review as many as 3,000 such ballots.
Palm Beach officials are expected to meet tomorrow morning and finish by Sunday, in time to report new returns by the deadline set by the Florida Supreme Court.
''We believe they will make the right decision,'' said US Representative Peter Deutsch, a Democrat from Fort Lauderdale.
At the hurricane shelter in Palm Beach County, which has been mobbed over the past two weeks by the news media, protesters, and various politicians, election officials handed out the last batch of ballots.
''Believe it or not,'' Burton said, ''the end is actually in sight.''
