ALLAHASSEE - George W. Bush was certified the winner of Florida's 25 electoral votes last night, a prize that will make him the nation's 43d president unless Al Gore can successfully contest the result in a local court.
Bush, in a brief televised address last night, claimed the victory and said he and his running mate, Dick Cheney, were ''preparing to serve.''
Nineteen days after Election Day, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris announced last night that Bush had won the state by 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast.
''Our American democracy has triumphed once again,'' Harris said in a nationally televised ceremony at the state Capitol, as Bush supporters cheered outside. ''The true winner in this election is the rule of law.''
In a blow to Gore, Harris refused to accept a nearly complete recount from Palm Beach County. Gore had already suffered a setback when heavily Democratic Miami-Dade County dropped its recount, citing lack of time. Gore aides said those two setbacks unfairly swung the contest to Bush.
Two hours after Harris declared Bush the winner, the Texas governor urged Gore to give up the fight. He didn't refer to himself as the president-elect, but he clearly sought to speak as one.
''The election was close but tonight, after a count, a recount, and yet another manual recount, Secretary Cheney and I are honored and humbled to have won the state of Florida, which gives us the needed electoral votes to win the election,'' the Texas governor said, speaking from the state Capitol in Austin.
''We will therefore undertake the responsibility of preparing to serve as America's next president and vice president.''
Election coverage, A10-13.
Referring to Gore's plan to contest the certification, Bush said: ''I respectfully ask him to reconsider.''
Bush also asked for the keys to the government's transition office, but a spokesman for the General Services Administration, which oversees the $5.3 million allocation for the process and the office space, said the transition won't formally begin until the outcome is uncontested. Nonetheless, Bush named Cheney as the head of his transition team and Andrew H. Card, the former Massachusetts legislator and US secretary of transportation, as his chief of staff.
Democratic vice presidential nominee Joseph I. Lieberman condemned the certification of Bush, asserting that the recount was incomplete and inaccurate. The Democratic team hopes that if a full recount is allowed in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, Gore would gain enough votes to win the election.
''Vice President Gore and I have no choice but to contest these actions as provided under Florida law and in accord with the decision of the Florida Supreme Court,'' Lieberman said. ''It is in our nation's interest that the winner in Florida is truly the person who got the most votes.''
Gore, in an interview posted last night on the Web site of The New York Times, said he would contest the certification to preserve ''the integrity of our democracy.''
''This controversy in the year 2000, as difficult as it might seem to us, is nothing compared to the election of 1800, where Thomas Jefferson finally prevailed after 36 ballots in Congress, if my history serves me correctly,'' Gore said.
Gore's lawyers said the vice president this morning would file a formal ''contest'' of the certification in the local Leon County Circuit Court.
In a last-minute drama in a saga that seemed an endless series of surprises, Palm Beach County failed to meet yesterday's 5 p.m. deadline for completing its recount. With the county about 800 ballots short of finishing, Harris said Palm Beach failed to submit the necessary final count. Thus, Harris voided Palm Beach's near-complete recount, substituting an earlier machine count and thus costing Gore at least another 180 votes.
The county, it appears, could have completed its vote by the deadline if it had not taken Thanksgiving Day off.
Gore also lost 52 votes when Nassau County voided its recount and reverted to an original machine count. If the Nassau and Palm Beach votes had been counted in Gore's favor, that still would have left the vice president about 300 votes short of the number he would have needed to beat Bush. But Gore aides said the vice president easily would have picked up that number if Miami-Dade had conducted a full manual recount.
''This election cannot be over,'' Gore attorney David Boies told reporters at a packed press conference here. ''There are votes, thousands of votes, that have never been counted once.''
But that brought a sharp rebuke from Bush attorney James A. Baker III, the former US secretary of state under President Bush who has acted as the chief advocate for the Texas governor. ''I can understand the pain of losing an election so very, very narrowly,'' Baker said. ''But it is time to honor the will of the people.''
Gore plans to address the nation today to explain why he is contesting the outcome, said aides, who brushed off questions about whether Gore might pull a surprise and give up the fight.
The Gore campaign plans to ask a circuit judge this morning to order that the uncounted or contested votes be newly tallied. A judge could dismiss the request or order a recount in some or all of the counties where Gore is contesting the result, Boies said.
If there is a new count, a judicial panel or special master would conduct it, Boies said, insisting that it could all be completed in time for the Dec. 12 date by which the representatives to the Electoral College must be named.
The biggest question revolves around Miami-Dade County. Officials in the heavily Democratic county, saying it would have been impossible to recount nearly 700,000 votes in time to meet the Florida Supreme Court's five-day time table, dropped their recount effort. The county had already awarded Gore 157 new votes when it stopped its recount, and Gore did not get credit for them. And, to the dismay of the Gore camp, Miami-Dade County also did not manually count about 10,000 ''undervote'' ballots, in which no choice for president was found by a machine.
While the legal battle moves this morning to Leon County Circuit Court in Tallahassee, the Bush and Gore legal teams are also preparing to duel in the US Supreme Court. The court has agreed to hear Bush's request that the hand recount be declared invalid, with written briefs due tomorrow and oral argument set for Friday.
The election in Florida, and across the nation, could hardly have been closer. Gore leads nationwide by 337,183 votes, according to an Associated Press tally, but a president is picked based on the Electoral College system. With the addition of Florida's 25 electoral votes, Bush would have 271, one more than needed to win the presidency. Gore has 267.
Democrats attacked Harris for ruling in Bush's favor, noting she co-chaired the governor's Florida campaign and campaigned for him during the New Hampshire primary. Harris has said that she is merely implementing state laws.
''Having Katherine Harris declare George W. Bush the winner is like having his campaign manager declare him the winner,'' said US Representative Edward Markey, the Malden Democrat who went to Florida at the request of the Gore campaign.
The congressman said that there were a ''few stray cats,'' a smattering of Democrats who don't want Gore to push the issue, but that ''99.9 percent of Democrats are behind Al Gore.''
Still, the certification of Bush as the winner could create a public relations problem for the vice president.
The Gore campaign was closely monitoring public opinion. Just a week or so ago, some Democrats were saying that Gore should accept the ruling of the Florida Supreme Court and the final certified recount. Then, when the Supreme Court set yesterday as the deadline for a recount, there was a widespread view that the election would then be over. But late last week, when it became apparent that Bush might be certified as the winner, Gore aides began talking about the necessity to contest the result.
Gore aides, while angry over Harris's decision to disallow Palm Beach's recount, also hoped that her action would help the vice president in convincing the public that Harris was acting unfairly. The Gore aides noted that the Florida Supreme Court had said that the recounts were due by 5 p.m. yesterday if Harris's office was open, or by 9 a.m. today. Palm Beach officials said they believed Harris had the discretion to allow several more hours for them to complete the process, which had involved hundreds of people working thousands of hours during the Thanksgiving weekend.
After pulling a near all-nighter in West Palm Beach, the three-member canvassing board missed the 5 p.m. deadline by slightly more than two hours. Still, it faxed the majority of the handcount results in time, then returned to work through the remaining 800 or so disputed ballots.
Canvassing board chairman Charles Burton called Harris's intransigence ''bogus.''
''The secretary of state has apparently decided to shut us down with two hours to go,'' said Burton, a circuit court judge. ''I don't see what difference another two or two and a half hours would make.''
That experience entailed recounting hundreds of thousands of the now-notorious butterfly ballots in the weeks since the election - overvoted ballots, undervoted ballots, and ballots that could not be read by machine. Starting Friday morning, the Palm Beach board examined almost 15,000 ballots as Republicans and Democrats monitored the proceedings.
Around 7:30 last night, the three members of the state canvassing board convened. Harris was accompanied by the two other members: Agriculture Commissioner Bob Crawford, a Democrat who supported Bush, and Clay Roberts, Florida state elections director, who took the place of Bush's brother, Governor Jeb Bush, who had recused himself.
Harris explained why the board had refused to accept the nearly complete returns from Palm Beach.
''Palm Beach County has submitted a document that purports to be an amended return, but contains two different compilations of the presidential vote,'' Harris said. ''One set of numbers is identified as partial manual recount that fails to comply with the provisions of Section 102.166. The other set of numbers is identified as the machine count required by law in this election, and these numbers are identical to those that were certified by the Palm Beach County canvassing board on Nov. 14.''
Harris then announced the final totals, saying: ''Accordingly, on behalf of the state Elections Canvassing Commission and in accordance with the laws of the state of Florida, I hereby declare Governor George W. Bush the winner of Florida's 25 electoral votes for the president for the United States.''
As Harris spoke, a cheer erupted from Bush supporters gathered outside on the statehouse plaza.
Crawford, the Democratic Bush supporter, defended the commission's work, saying, ''After all the jokes, after all of the anguish, we've just got a close election. ... But I think it's over. It should be over.''
But Gore supporters said Harris's actions were overtly political. US Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat and former governor, said the board at least should have followed a deadline of 9 a.m. today, as allowed by the Florida Supreme Court.
''It would have bled off some of the poison that has infiltrated the process,'' Graham said.
Instead, at 9 a.m. today, lawyers for Bush and Gore are to meet in the Leon County circuit courthouse, still battling over who won one of the closest presidential elections is US history.
Kranish reported from Washington and Milligan from Tallahassee. Globe reporters Lynda Gorov in Palm Beach County and Tina Cassidy in Tallahassee also contributed.
