EST PALM BEACH, Fla. - To some Democrats it is the ultimate remedy; to Republicans it is unthinkable.
But even as the Gore campaign's legion of lawyers battle for hand recounts in courts from Miami to Tallahassee, another group is poised to press this potentially more explosive question:
Should there be a new vote in Palm Beach County?
Over the past week, local attorneys have filed at least a dozen lawsuits here to argue that the now notorious butterfly ballot misled many people to vote either for the wrong candidate or for two of them.
This morning, lawyers will try to convince Circuit Court Judge Jorge Labarga that Florida law allows a new vote in cases like this, where they will say problems at polling places undermined the legitimacy of the election.
Going in, LaBarga has set the legal bar very high.
''I want you to find me another case in the continental United States since the year 1776 where there's been a re-vote in a presidential election. That's my homework for you attorneys,'' LaBarga told the attorneys at a hearing earlier this week.
In a brief filed last night to LaBarga, Henry Handler, representing a West Palm Beach chiropractor, argued that the court wouldn't be ordering a new presidential election, it would be helping complete the last one. And he cited Florida law in arguing that reasonable doubt exists as to whether the certified election results expressed the will of the voters.
Another local lawyer, who has spent the past week preparing for this morning, admitted the difficulty of arguing for a new vote. There have been re-votes in contests ranging from county commissioner to Congress, but no one will find a precedent for a re-vote in a presidential contest, said Robert Pasin, who is representing a Boca Raton businessman.
In making their case, the lawyers are relying on a 1998 ruling by Florida's Supreme Court that affirmed a judge's right to cancel an election if he finds the voting did not comply with state law, even if there was no evidence of fraud or intentional wrongdoing.
In arguing against a new vote, lawyers representing Texas Governor George W. Bush and Florida's secretary of state may counter by citing a 1974 case that limits the grounds for intervention in elections by the judge. Election Day confusion alone is not a sufficient impediment to the voters, the state appeals court has ruled.
Legal scholars believe the issue of whether there will be a re-vote has more to do with the judge's appetite for political risk than the merits of the case.
''The judge is in a difficult position,'' said Bob Jarvis, a professor of constitutional law at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale. ''This is a state judge who will have to stand for reelection. His judgment will be influenced by the fact that he will be in the community long after everyone else packs up and leaves. Still, if the judge gets to the merits, I think this is a good case.''
Standing in the wings for the past week have been five university professors who have studied Palm Beach County's election results. They plan to present flow charts and pages of statistical analysis as evidence of serious flaws in the county's election.
It is well known by now that Patrick J. Buchanan received more than three times as many votes in Palm Beach as in any other county in Florida. Many of those votes came from precincts dominated by blacks and Jews - unlikely constituencies for Buchanan.
After studying 4,481 counties and townships around the country with more than 25,000 voters, the professors are poised to testify that Palm Beach exhibited the most egregious of this sort of election irregularities.
Among the disturbing findings, they say, are that absentee voters in Palm Beach were four times less likely to vote for Buchanan than Election Day voters. Absentee voters did not use a butterfly ballot. In sum, they claim, at least 2,000 votes recorded for Buchanan should have gone to Gore.
Still, many legal observers and the newly appointed Gore campaign lawyers are doubtful that LaBarga will order a new election here.
''I don't think the campaign is thinking about this option in a serious way,'' said Harvard professor Laurence Tribe, who is assisting the Gore campaign here.
''It's a less conventional and less obvious remedy than merely counting ballots by hand. But there's a very strong case to say this election should be voided. It seems to me a reasonably easy case to show that the election results are invalid under Florida law.''
