ALLAHASSEE - Florida's Supreme Court yesterday granted an emergency reprieve to Al Gore's White House hopes, blocking the state's plan to announce the final presidential vote today. The court acted just 19 hours before Secretary of State Katherine Harris planned to certify the final tally, which George W. Bush had hoped and seemed likely to win.
The high court, dominated by the appointees of Democratic governors, said it would hold a Monday afternoon hearing before deciding whether to act on Gore's request to allow an ongoing manual recount of ballots in three South Florida counties.
Separately, a federal appeals court last night in Atlanta denied Bush's request to stop the hand recounts, underscoring that the final arbiter of the election may be the Florida Supreme Court.
Without the manual recounts, Bush has been leading Gore narrowly. Bush led by 300 votes as of Tuesday's deadline for recounts. As of late last night, Bush had widened his margin to 760 votes with the addition of overseas ballots, according to an unofficial survey of 65 out of 67 counties by the Associated Press. Those overseas ballots were due by midnight.
These results do not include any vote gains made by the candidates in disputed hand recounts underway in Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Broward County reported that Gore has gained 48 votes in the hand recount so far. Palm Beach County reported that Bush has gained four votes in the hand recount so far.
Gore, elated by news of the Supreme Court ruling, emerged from his vice presidential residence yesterday afternoon to declare that the election won't be over until the last vote is counted.
''I'm very pleased that the hand counts are continuing,'' Gore said. ''They're proceeding despite efforts to obstruct them. And that is why the decision just announced by the Florida Supreme Court, preventing the Florida secretary of state from certifying the election results ... is so important.''
Gore's statement failed to mention that the Supreme Court has not yet spoken to the substance of the matter: whether the hand recounted votes should be included in the final state tally.
The court has only agreed to hear the request, and to bar, until it has ruled, a final tally by Harris, a Republican supporter of Bush.
Until then, the court said, the status quo must be maintained: ''The Court ... enjoins the ... Secretary [of State] ... from certifying the results of the ... election, until further notice of this Court.''
But in a boost for Gore, the Supreme Court emphasized that it was not stopping three South Florida counties from recounting ballots by hand.
Such recounts are now underway in Broward and Palm Beach counties, while Miami-Dade, the state's largest county, reversed itself yesterday and said it would conduct a recount too.
Bush representative James A. Baker III, in a brief statement last night, said he was ''disappointed'' in the Supreme Court ruling, but he noted that the court did not rule ''on the facts.'' He said he remains confident that the Supreme Court eventually will disallow the hand recounts.
As for the separate decision by the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to reject Bush's emergency request to stop the recount, Baker said a further appeal is possible. But the federal court emphasized that elections are usually a state matter.
''States have the primary authority to determine the manner of appointing presidential electors and to resolve most controversies concerning the appointment of electors,'' the federal ruling said.
All of this occurred on a day of roller-coaster court actions and emotions. At first, it went badly for Gore.
The first ruling came at 10 a.m. from Terry Lewis, a mustachioed Tallahassee circuit court judge and part-time mystery novelist whose latest potboiler is titled ''Conflict of Interest.''
Earlier this week, Lewis ruled that Harris must use her discretion to decide whether to extend last Tuesday's deadline for manual recounts. Harris, who has been criticized by Democrats for having her own conflict of interest, announced on Wednesday that she was denying the extension requests.
Harris said state law gave her discretion to extend the deadline only in cases such as voter fraud or natural disaster.
Gore's lawyers, including David Boies, who won the US government's antitrust case against Microsoft Corp., had argued in Lewis's courtroom that Harris did not properly use her discretion.
But Lewis shot down the Gore argument in a tart, one-paragraph dismissal. Lewis did not deliver his ruling in person, leaving it to a clerk to face dozens of television cameras to read the statement.
''As noted in my previous order, Florida law grants to the secretary, as the chief elections officer, broad discretionary authority to accept or reject late filed returns,'' Lewis wrote.
''On the limited evidence presented it appears that the secretary has exercised her reasoned judgment to determine what relevant factors and criteria should be considered, applied them to the facts and circumstances pertinent to the individual counties involved and made her decision. My order requires nothing more.''
The announcement, carried live on national television, set off cheers in the Bush camp here and in Austin, while prompting a subdued legal huddle among the disappointed Gore advocates. Baker, who served as secretary of state for former president Bush and is now advising Bush's eldest son, appeared shortly afterward to make a brief statement, saying ''The rule of law has prevailed.'' Baker took no questions.
In Austin, there was talk about possibly issuing a victory statement today if Harris certified that Bush had won the election without the latest recounts.
The Gore camp, meanwhile, was disappointed but defiant. Gore advocate Warren Christopher, secretary of state under President Clinton, appeared with Boies before dozens of reporters and television cameras in Tallahassee.
''While we're obviously disappointed in Judge Lewis's ruling this morning, we expect that the recounts will continue as authorized and directed by the Florida Supreme Court yesterday,'' Christopher said.
Then, shortly before 5 p.m., the mood in the Gore and Bush camps reversed when the latest word from the Florida Supreme Court was read to reporters on the courthouse steps. The Gore public relations machine, which has been as omnipresent as the legal one, went into action, deciding that the vice president would hail the ruling as a victory without mentioning that the court had not decided whether the results of the recounts would matter.
The moods could soon shift again, however, as they have many times during the past week. For example, one possible outcome is that the counties will finish their counting but then be told by the court that the retabulation would not be accepted.
Thus, the possibility existed that the manual recount might show Gore had won the state but that Bush would be declared the winner, a scenario that could lead to an outpouring of anger from some Gore supporters.
Already, Gore is ahead of Bush by more than 260,000 votes in the nationwide totals.
If Bush is declared the winner in Florida, however, he would have more than the needed 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.
After so much attention on Florida's hand recounts, which may not count at all, the emphasis last night briefly shifted to the overseas ballots. If the hand counts are not allowed, then Gore would need a 301-vote advantage among the overseas ballots to win the state. Even Gore aides conceded that was unlikely.
If the recounts are allowed by the Supreme Court, the fate of the election may hinge - literally - on chads - flecks of paper - hanging from ballots now being retabulated in South Florida.
More than 1.5 million votes are to be recounted in three counties, including nearly 700,000 in Miami-Dade, which decided yesterday to join Broward and Palm Beach counties in recounting.
In Broward County, election workers had completed counting more than 110 of the Democratic-leaning county's 609 precincts by late yesterday evening. Many of the county's 588,000 ballots were still to be tallied.
Republicans continued fighting the county Canvassing Board in court.
In a morning hearing, the county's attorneys fought subpoenas calling for members of the Canvassing Board to appear in a Fort Lauderdale court. But a judge ruled in the afternoon that board members could remain at the operations center and the count could continue.
In Palm Beach County, 29 teams of county employees and monitors from the Republican and Democratic parties sparred from early in the morning to late into the afternoon.
At 4 p.m., one Canvassing Board member, Judge Charles Burton, announced that only 39 of the county's 531 precincts had been counted.
In a further complication in Palm Beach, Circuit Court Judge Jorge Labarga said he wouldn't rule until Monday whether it is constitutional to order a completely new vote in Palm Beach County.
Globe reporters David Abel, reporting from Palm Beach County, and Raja Mishra, reporting from Miami-Dade County, contributed to this report. Material from the Associated Press was included.
