ALLAHASSEE - Florida officials demanded yesterday that the manual recount of the state's presidential vote be completed today by 5 p.m., a move promptly challenged in court by Al Gore's lawyers, who said the deadline was being unfairly imposed by a key supporter of George W. Bush.
''The process of counting and recounting the votes cast on Election Day must end,'' said Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a prominent Bush supporter, asserting that state law requires her to collect and certify the ballots today.
The Harris decision has important, perhaps decisive, ramifications. The hand-counting has gone so slowly in some counties - or has not begun at all - that such a deadline would leave uncounted many of the ballots that Gore wanted reviewed. A state court ruling is expected this morning, either upholding her decision or staying its effect.
Warren M. Christopher, the former US secretary of state who is acting as Gore's advocate in Florida, accused Harris of performing her duties in a ''partisan'' manner in an effort ''to produce a particular result in the election, rather than ensure that the voice of all citizens of the state would be heard.''
Harris's announcement came on a day of dizzying court actions and ballot-counting in which:
The Bush campaign lost its effort in federal court to stop the manual recount altogether. Bush's lawyers had contended that a hand count is imprecise and open to mischief. But a federal judge ruled that the count was allowed under state law and dismissed the case. The Bush campaign was considering last night whether to appeal.
The Gore campaign went to state court to try to void today's 5 p.m. deadline for concluding the manual count. Gore's lawyers said the deadline has previously been extended for special circumstances, most recently during Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The judge in the case planned to release a ruling at 10:30 a.m. today.
Hand counting continued in Volusia County yesterday, and in Palm Beach County was set to begin today, but Miami-Dade County has not yet begun its work. The fourth county where Gore sought a manual recount, Broward County, yesterday decided not to hold a hand count at all. It seemed unlikely that counting in those two counties could be concluded today. Palm Beach officials said they may need until Saturday.
In addition, Palm Beach County officials said they were afraid that if they submitted only a partial manual recount by today's deadline, the state might void all of the county's votes.
A state official, responding to Palm Beach County's concerns, said that if the county missed the deadline, one of the original machine counts may be substituted for the ongoing manual recount.
''What would happen is we would certify the election results that we have on file, and those files are the last machine count,'' said Agriculture Secretary Bob Crawford, a member of the state elections canvassing commission. The Bush campaign prefers the results of existing machine counts in Palm Beach County, where Democrats hope the hand count will favor Gore.
In all of this tedious counting and technical maneuvering, the presidency is at stake.
Bush has a 388-vote lead in Florida, according to a tally by the Associated Press. A statistical analysis by the Miami Herald of results from select Palm Beach precincts concluded that if a hand count is conducted in all the county's precincts, Gore could be expected to collect some 3,100 votes and Bush could get 2,098. The 1,000-vote Gore gain would be enough to change the election result if Bush did not gain votes in other counties or from overseas absentee ballots.
At the end of a day that at times seemed more like a legal seminar than the aftermath of a presidential campaign, Gore emerged from his White House office to make his second substantive statement about the Florida recount. While insisting he didn't want to discuss the particulars of the case, Gore said the count should be concluded without ''interference.'' He insisted that he is more interested in protecting the ''process'' than the political contest.
''I would not want to win the presidency by a few votes cast in error or misinterpreted or not counted,'' Gore said. ''And I don't think Governor Bush wants that either. So, having enough patience to spend the days necessary to hear exactly what the American people have said is really the most important thing, because that is what honors our Constitution and redeems the promise of our democracy.''
Bush made no public appearance yesterday, leaving his spokeswoman, Karen Hughes, to protest the Gore effort to extend the 5 p.m. deadline.
''The vice president basically said we should ignore the law so he can overturn the results of this election,'' Hughes said.
It remained unclear when a waiting nation will learn who has been elected president.
The final Florida count, including absentee ballots, is supposed to be announced by state officials on Saturday around noon. But it remained possible that more lawsuits would be filed in Florida and lengthen the process here, and possible that Bush would seek recounts in four other states.
The first legal move of the day came when Bush's lawyers asked US District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks of Miami to stop the manual count.
The hand counts being done in Democrat-heavy precincts will probably turn up more votes for Al Gore, so Bush's team argued yesterday that this was unfair to Florida's 63 other counties.
''Their votes are being treated in a different way. That is disparate and unconstitutional treatment,'' said Bush lawyer Theodore Olsen.
But Gore's attorneys argued that the count was allowed under Florida law. ''As long as we don't have one uniform system, we will have to live with the fact that the nature of the vote may depend on where you live,'' said Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe, flown in from Boston by the Gore team to argue the case.
Middlebrooks, a Clinton appointee, sided with Tribe, saying that different treatment in different localities was a defining quality of the American electoral system.
''The procedures employed by Florida appear to be neutral and, while not yet complete, the process seems to be unfolding as it has on other occasions,'' Middlebrooks wrote in a 24-page opinion delivered one hour after yesterday's court arguments.
Middlebrooks said that since the Bush team couldn't prove their claims that the election was tainted, the courts should let the process unfold. The process, wrote the judge, ''is reasonable and non-discriminatory on its face.''
But while the judge ruled against Bush, he did express concern with the system in general, echoing the rumblings of a public surprised at the ad hoc nature of such a crucial element of democracy.
''These concerns are real and in our view unavoidable given the inherent decentralization involved in state electoral recount procedures,'' he wrote. ''No method of tabulation is ever free from error.''
Meanwhile, in Tallahassee, a fight was unfolding over Harris's announcement of today's deadline for hand counting of ballots.
Harris invited Christopher and Gore campaign chairman William Daley to her office early yesterday to explain the decision. Harris told them she planned to certify the state's election results with whatever is sent to her office by 5 p.m., not counting the overseas ballots due by Friday.
Harris acknowledged the state did waive the deadline when Hurricane Andrew devastated Florida in October 1992. ''But a close election, regardless of the identity of the candidates, is not such a circumstance. The Legislature obviously specifically contemplated close elections; the law provides for automatic recounts, protests, and manual recounts. And it plainly states when this process must end,'' her statement said.
Harris came under attack from Christopher and other Gore associates, who noted that she has been active in the Bush campaign, appearing for the Texas governor in New Hampshire during the primary earlier this year. Harris is also a political ally of Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the younger brother of George W. Bush.
Less than an hour later, Crawford, the canvassing commissioner, emerged to defend the decision. Crawford joined Harris on the state's three-member election canvassing board, which certifies election returns, after Jeb Bush recused himself, saying he wanted to avoid a conflict of interest.
Crawford, a Democrat, supported Bush in the election. He said he and Harris could remain objective in the case, noting that anybody involved in the process would probably have supported either Bush or Gore in the election.
Globe reporter Raja Mishra, reporting from Miami, contributed to this report. Johnson reported from Tallahassee, Kranish from Washington.
