EDERAL JUDGE Donald Middlebrooks acted wisely when he refused to intervene in the Bush-Gore election dispute in Florida. This matter is best handled by recounting the votes, not by going to court. The two candidates would be wise to withdraw the lawsuits and devise a procedure that will confine this controversy to Florida and decide the election once and for all.
Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris provided the grounds for another suit yesterday when she confirmed a deadline of 5 p.m. today for the results of hand recounts to be submitted to her office for official certification. This is an inflexible interpretation of Florida election law. Harris is a Republican who campaigned for Bush in New Hampshire, and the Gore camp quickly cried foul and threatened to sue.
The four counties where Gore's people requested recounts are all Democratic strongholds, where Gore would be expected to pick up most of the extra votes unearthed in a hand recount. Volusia County will probably complete the tally by the deadline, but Palm Beach and Broward will miss it, and Dade has begun the recount. The Republicans wanted Judge Middlebrooks to declare all the hand recounts invalid, but Harris's decision would serve them almost as well. Greater use of hand recounts is preferable to letting a questionable statewide result stand.
Meanwhile the Republicans will be appealing Middlebrooks's decision, the Democrats will file their suit against Harris's, and suits against the notorious butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County will be heard today. Bush partisans have until Thursday or Friday to decide whether to extend the recount controversy to Iowa.
Al Gore and George W. Bush should, for once, start acting like statesmen. Either in person or by telephone they ought to strike an agreement that confines the election dispute to Florida - about as good a microcosm of the national political mood as one can get - and use hand recounts and the absentee ballots to decide who will be the next president. If they cannot stomach a personal dialogue, they might appoint surrogates of the caliber of Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter to negotiate a bipartisan compromise.
This might involve a hand recount in some counties that favored Bush, but even these new recounts would be far less protracted than continuous court challenges and escalation to other states.
The Florida election dispute is a greater test of Gore and Bush than anything in the campaign. The men who would be president need to show that they can reach an agreement that puts the interests of the nation first.
