Following are excerpts from the statements of David Boies, lawyer for Al Gore, and Barry Richard, lawyer for George W. Bush, in the Leon County Circuit Court in Tallahassee.
BOIES
Under the Florida Supreme Court's order those certified results (from Palm Beach County) were required to be included in the certified results of the secretary of state and the Election
Canvassing Board. ... In an election contest, as long as there are legal votes, they have to be considered at this stage in the proceeding, whether or not they should have been concluded at the certification stage. ...
Miami-Dade stopped its manual recount before the deadline - that is, it made a decision not to continue with the manual recount. So not only did it never finish, but it intentionally stopped. ...
Second, unlike Palm Beach, Miami-Dade did not certify its partial results. Neither of those distinctions, we believe, make difference at this stage - that is, the election contest stage - because, again, the issue before the court is: Is there or are there legal votes that have been rejected? Those are still legal votes that should be considered in this election contest, so that the fact that those votes exists is what is important, not whether or not they were certified, and not even whether or not they should have been certified. ... So you have in Dade County votes that have never been manually recounted that are sufficient to change the election. ...
I think that our purpose today is to get to the evidence and get to the legal arguments that will deal with these particular issues.
RICHARD
If we accept Mr. Boies's premise, there is no reason for a tabulation on Election Night, it makes no difference what the tabulation said, it makes no difference what the canvassing board did, we might as well take all of the ballots on Election Night and ship them to Tallahassee for the court to begin counting, because according to Mr. Boies's premise - which, again, he did not elucidate today, but it's the underlying premise - all that one needs to do, if one is a candidate, or for that matter, under the statute, any voter, is to file an election contest under subsection 168, and the court must begin counting ballots without consideration of anything that the canvassing boards did. ...
Contrary to the longstanding and clear, established law of the state of Florida, which Mr. Boies has meticulously avoided discussing, and that law is simply this: The conduct of the canvassing boards, both with respect to whether or not they will conduct a manual recount, and the matter in which they conduct it, comes to this court with a presumption of correctness.
Legislature has granted those boards a broad degree of discretion, and the only issue on an election contest, when we have had a canvassing board that has taken action, that has engaged in fact finding, that has made a decision, is whether or not that board has abused its discretion.
And abuse of discretion is one of the highest standards known to the law. So what we are here for today is for the plaintiff to carry its heavy burden of proving that the canvassing boards not only acted wrongly, but acted in a fashion which no reasonable person could have done.
