EST PALM BEACH, Fla. - At least their T-shirt slogans showed a sense of humor.
''Got Chad?'' read one. ''Sore Loserman 2000'' went another, a decidedly unofficial takeoff on the official Gore-Lieberman campaign logo. A third silkscreen summed up the protesters' position: ''Certified Enough is Enough.''
That position was no joke.
''It's important for us to be here because what happens affects the world,'' said Marie Vachon, 31, a Republican and a real estate agent from Atlanta, as passing cars honked in support. ''The Gore people are just trying everything they can to get around the rules.''
Like Vachon, many of the Republicans carrying placards and shouting outside the county building where votes were being recounted again yesterday said they paid their own plane fare to Florida. They said they were using unpaid vacation days to demonstrate in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and now West Palm Beach. Many also mentioned that they had been campaign volunteers for George W. Bush.
But they insisted that no one had sent them from canvassing board to canvassing board, as Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph I. Lieberman alleged yesterday. Calling their presence ''orchestrated demonstrations,'' he said they were intentionally trying to intimidate local officials into stopping the recounts.
''These demonstrations are a disservice to our democracy,'' Lieberman said.
The demonstrators themselves insisted otherwise, despite Miami-Dade County's refusal to hand-count votes after protesters charged the room where canvassing officials were meeting Wednesday. The recollection of those events, like both the Nov. 7 balloting and the standards for reexamining those ballots, split along partisan lines.
Thomas Whatman, 34, who is executive director of the Ohio Republican Party when he is not demonstrating in Florida, called Lieberman's accusations ''laughable,'' adding, ''It just shows how desperate the Democrats have become.'' Whatman, who was outside the Miami building at the time, agreed that there was shouting but denied there was any shoving.
But Michelle Kucera, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Party who was on the scene, attested to both, as well as some punches thrown by her opponents, she said. She estimated that 40 demonstrators had tried to push their way inside the meeting room.
Late Thursday or early yesterday, a brick was thrown through a window at the Broward County Democratic Party office in Plantation, Fla. No one was hurt.
By yesterday morning, the canvassing boards of Broward and Palm Beach counties were reexamining hundreds of disputed ballots in an attempt to end the 2000 presidential campaign once and for all. With thousands more ballots to go, both boards were expected to put in 12-hour days during the weekend to meet the recount deadline of 5 p.m. tomorrow set by the Florida Supreme Court.
That deadline, as well as the entire hand recount, have been called into question by the Bush campaign, which yesterday was granted its request to have the US Supreme Court consider whether the Florida Supreme Court overstepped its authority.
''I'm staying until it's over; there's nothing else I can do,'' said Layna McConkey, 31, a health policy researcher from Virginia who cut her honeymoon short and missed her first Thanksgiving as a newlywed to observe the now-canceled Miami recount and protest the ongoing one in Palm Beach. ''My husband's a Bush supporter, so he understands. But we won't be buying many Christmas presents this year, that's for sure.''
The process McConkey and perhaps 50 others were protesting went on without incident yesterday, as canvassers tried to determine voter intent on ballots with either no space punched for president or with more than one space punched. Those interested could observe it for themselves, but only by taking a brief guided tour and watching through a glass partition.
''I thought I should come and see because it's history being made,'' said Jeremy Waxler, 34, who works in the public records department of the Massachusetts Secretary of State's office and recently passed the Bar exam. He added that he was in the area anyway to visit his grandmother.
Others had made a point to be in West Palm Beach, including the 83-year-old designer of the Votomatic voting machine being blamed for miscounts of thousands of ballots. William S. Rouverol, a retired professor of mechanical engineering, testified before the canvassing board, and later said he knew some problems with the machine existed, but didn't know they had been used in Florida until the media and Democrats contacted him.
''We used to sit around the dinner table and try to figure out different styluses,'' Rouverol said, referring to the mechanism that does not always complete the punch and led to ballots being miscounted.
