ALLAHASSEE - The next phase of the presidential election begins today when lawyers for the Democrats file a legal contest here against the vote tabulations of at least three Florida counties.
The court filing, scheduled for this morning, could conceivably result in more than 600,000 ballots being hauled to Tallahassee and recounted by a court-appointed special master.
Vice President Al Gore's legal team said it is specifically focusing on more than 10,000 ''undervotes,'' ballots that failed to register a vote for a presidential candidate when counted by machine in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties.
The Democrats will also ask a judge to allow all ''dimpled'' ballots, those in which a voter tried to punch a hole but failed to break through the ballot card, to be included in a final tally.
Also, the Gore legal team plans to contest the results in Nassau County, where the canvassing board certified the ''unofficial'' election night returns instead of the machine recount, which would have added 51 votes to the Gore-Lieberman total.
''Counting now becomes a matter of judicial interpretation,'' said a Gore lawyer, David Boies.
The Gore plan to contest the election drew thunder from the Bush campaign, with former secretary of state James A. Baker III, speaking for Bush, declaring that the process of counting votes must end. `At some point ... the lawyers must go home,'' Baker said.
The Gore complaint is scheduled to be filed as a single action in Leon County circuit court this morning. The county canvassing officials named as defendants will probably have to answer the complaint within two days, and a trial could begin before the end of the week, Boies said. In past elections, judges have often appointed special masters to investigate the vote count and report back to the court.
The results in a fourth county, Seminole, may also be contested on the claim that Republican election workers illegally filled in missing voter identification information for party members' absentee ballots. The Gore team was still weighing a decision last night.
''They actually changed the applications after the applications were already on file,'' Boies said.
In Miami-Dade County, lawyers are seeking to include 388 votes that were discovered through a partial manual recount, which added a net 156 votes for Gore before the canvassing board quit that process Wednesday. Democrats have accused the board of caving under pressure from an agitated Republican crowd outside their office. The 388 votes were never certified.
There are also 10,000 ballots that the Miami-Dade machines read as undervotes which the Gore lawyers want counted by hand, contending that the heavily Democratic county could net many more votes for the vice president.
''Once that [hand] recount has started, the board does not have the discretion to prematurely stop it,'' Boies said.
Boies denied any attempt to get votes counted a fourth time. He said the undervotes were ''never counted once for the presidential election.''
Gore lawyers said they will also attack the ''inexplicable actions'' in Nassau County, where the original count was certified rather than a machine recount which added to the Gore total.
In Palm Beach County, the Gore campaign is asking for a judicial review of the ballots, hoping to have ''dimpled'' chads included in the final count. The county canvassing board used a stricter standard during its hand recount than the Gore campaign believes they should have, only accepting dimpled chads, or indentations, where they felt they could determine the intent of the voter.
''The determination during the contest is whether the canvassing board applied the correct standard,'' Boies said, adding that he did not yet know if the so-called butterfly ballot used in Palm Beach County would be contested.
The Gore campaign believes the vice president could gain between 300 and 600 votes if all the dimpled chads are included. It also wants a judge to add to the final tally the results of the hand recount that Secretary of State Katherine Harris declined to accept after yesterday's 5 p.m. deadline.
