ALLAHASSEE - The Florida Legislature moved yesterday toward calling a special session to award the state's electoral votes to George W. Bush, while Al Gore, suffering another legal setback, took to the airwaves to try to rally public opinion to his side.
Backed by Governor Jeb Bush, Florida Republicans appeared poised to take up legislation that could give the state's 25 electoral votes to his brother, George W. Bush.
''If there is uncertainty, the Legislature has clear delegated authority from the US Constitution to seek the electors. I admire them for, at least on a contingency basis, accepting that responsibility and duty,'' the Florida governor told reporters.
Bush's lawyers, meanwhile, continued their fight against Gore's court effort to contest the Florida results. The GOP legal team got the judge in the case to demand that all of the 1.16 million ballots cast in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties be hauled to the capital for possible recounting, instead of the 14,000 disputed ballots the Gore campaign wants brought and tallied by a court-appointed master.
''Pack 'em up and bring `em up,'' said Judge N. Sanders Sauls, who also ordered sample voting machines to be brought to the capital.
Time is the Republicans' ally, as the mid-December deadline for reporting the state's votes approaches. The Gore campaign wants the court to begin counting ballots while considering the legal issues in the case, which is slated for oral arguments on Saturday, but Sauls denied their request Tuesday.
Gore's lawyers said yesterday that they would appeal to the Florida Supreme Court, asking the justices to order Sauls to start the counting.
''I don't think we're having an election about the election,'' Gore said on the ''Today'' show, one of a series of network appearances he made on CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS yesterday. ''I think that we're having a test of our democratic principles. Will we count all the votes or not?''
Employing a folksy metaphor, Gore compared the thousands of Florida ballots that were not read by machines to items that don't register on a grocery store scanner, and have to be punched in by hand.
Eyeing the Dec. 12 deadline for selecting Florida's representatives to the Electoral College, GOP legislators said they are heading toward picking their own electoral slate. Both houses of the Legislature are controlled by Republicans, and Democrats conceded that it would certainly pick a Bush slate, as early as next week.
Jeb Bush, who has generally stayed in the background of the public debate over his brother's future, yesterday applauded the idea of legislative intervention. He said he would sign legislation naming Florida's electors ''if it was the appropriate thing to do.
''If there's indecision about who the electors are by Dec. 12, I think it would be a travesty not to have electors seated in the Electoral College from Florida,'' he said.
Though their leaders stopped short of making a final announcement, Florida legislators are expected to recommend today whether or not a special session should be called.
''I fully expect the Republicans are going to take us into a special session,'' said state Representative Dan Gelber, a Democrat.
Republicans were talking about when, not if, such a session would be held. ''I think we have to do everything we can to ensure that the electors are selected'' by the Dec. 12 deadline, said state Representative Dudley Goodlette, a Republican.
''It was a done deal three weeks ago,'' complained state Senator Jim Rossin, a Democrat. ''We're going to be in a constitutional crisis.''
Speaking on CNN, Gore said, ''I can't believe that the people of Florida want to see the expression of their will taken away by politicians. I think you'd see quite a negative response to it.''
While the Legislature contemplated its potentially explosive role, the flurry of court activity continued.
The Bush campaign appealed a decision by a Leon County Circuit Court judge not to combine a Seminole County ballot case with Gore's general contest of the election. The appeal indicates how seriously the Bush campaign takes the Seminole case, which challenges thousands of absentee ballots for which local election officials allowed Republican party operatives to correct incomplete absentee ballot applications.
Democrats plan a similar challenge in Martin County.
A lawyer for the Seminole County canvassing board said he wanted to depose Gore, to try to show the vice president's campaign was behind the suit, which was filed by local Democrats. The Gore campaign is not a party in the case, but could well benefit from a ruling invalidating some of the 15,000 absentee ballots.
The Florida Supreme Court, meanwhile, accepted briefs on a case challenging the ''butterfly'' ballots in Palm Beach County, which many voters said they found confusing and which led to mistaken votes.
Constitutional lawyers disagree on whether the Florida Legislature has a legal right or obligation to get involved in choosing the state's electors.
Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman, testifying by phone before the Joint Committtee on the Manner of the Appointment of Presidential Electors, said the Florida lawmakers had no legal or ethical business selecting electors, since Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris has already certified an electoral slate.
''This is a recipe for ensuring instability in the process of presidential elections,'' and ''undermines the legitimacy of the presidential office on a permanent basis,'' he warned.
But other lawyers and law professors told the lawmakers that the state Legislature should act quickly to protect Florida's role in the election by naming its own electors - and that the legislators were under no constitutional obligation to take into account the votes of the people.
That argument brought an angry series of complaints from Florida voters yesterday, some of whom were flown in and put in hotels by the Democratic Party so they could testify before the panel.
''You will be no better than the thief who walks into a bank and robs the bank... no better than people who sneak in the course of darkness and rob and kill,'' bellowed the Reverend Richard Harris, minister of public affairs at the St. John's First Missionary Baptist Church in Belle Glade, Fla.
''I think you've had an eye-opener,'' said Sylvia Shapiro, 69, a New Yorker who retired in Florida in 1982. ''In West Palm Beach, we don't sit around the pool; we think,'' she said.
The citizen speakers wore laminated nametags that said ''In America, Everybody's Vote Counts.'' Shapiro said the nametags were given to them by the Democratic Party, which she said also paid to fly her and more than 100 others up from South Florida. The party also paid for their hotels, she said.
''There are folks who said they wanted to come here. So we got 'em here,'' said state Democratic committee spokesman Steve Tankel.
No voters spoke in support of legislative action. ''It was an organized effort'' to keep out dissenters, complained Alec Yasinsac of Tallahassee, who said he arrived to speak more than an hour before the hearing started, but couldn't because the pro-Gore voters had arrived earlier and used up all the time for public comment.
Legislators listened to two hours of complaints by voters who said they had been prevented from voting, had mistakenly voted for the wrong candidate, or were worried that their votes weren't tabulated.
But the committee members seemed more concerned with the state and federal constitutional issues raised by the possibility of naming its own electors.
Members said they didn't want to act so hastily that Florida's reputation would be tarnished, but they also don't want to wait so long that choosing electors is not an option. The conundrum was compounded by the fact that no one - neither lawmakers nor lawyers - agreed on what the state's role could and should be.
Roger J. Magnussen, an attorney advising the state Senate, said the law may not require the Legislature to act by Dec. 12. While that deadline is clear for electors chosen by the normal electoral process, he said, the Constitution and US code does not set a deadline for electors chosen by the state Legislature.
