ASHINGTON - The Florida Supreme Court's decision last night to extend the deadline for recounting votes was a legal victory, but not a complete one, for Al Gore. The court let Gore's candidacy live to fight another day - five days, to be precise - but it is not yet clear whether that is enough time for the vice president to overcome George W. Bush's 930-vote lead.
Moreover, the court did not explicitly address the highly technical but crucial question of whether punch card ballots that aren't punched through - the so-called ''dimpled ballots'' - should be counted as votes. Instead, it cited a ''particularly apt'' decision by the Illinois Supreme Court that voters should not be disenfranchised just because they didn't entirely dislodge the paper chad from the ballot.
Most significantly, the Florida Supreme Court chose not to set its own clear guidelines on how to discern voter intent, leaving it up to local canvassing boards to determine which dimpled or otherwise ambiguous ballots to count and which to set aside.
Those boards, as Republicans were quick to point out last night, are controlled by Democrats in the three counties with ongoing recounts. The boards, citing the court's direction that they should ''determine voter intent,'' may now feel free to count ballots that Republicans have disputed.
While Gore won a reprieve with the ruling, the Bush camp saw a potential silver lining in a ruling that Bush's chief representative in Florida, James A. Baker III, denounced as ''unfair'' and a usurpation of legislative power. The court's five-day deadline, including the Thanksgiving holiday, could make it hard for Gore to pick up enough votes to overcome Bush's lead. And, by setting the deadline so soon, the court left enough time for Bush to formally contest the final result, which is due by 9 a.m. Monday at the latest. Bush would have 10 days after the vote certification to contest the results.
Bush also has a pending case against the hand counts before the federal courts, which could lead to a US Supreme Court decision. And Baker left open the possibility that the Bush campaign might seek relief from Florida's Republican-dominated legislature.
From the Bush viewpoint, the continuing question over chads and dimpled ballots could give him ammunition to contest the final certified result.
But the court, in its stinging rebuke of the Bush campaign's plea to uphold Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris' Nov. 14 deadline for recounted votes, handed Gore the thing he most needed - time. If the court last night had upheld the Nov. 14 deadline, Gore might well have felt compelled to concede the election.
The key finding of the court was that it disagreed with the Bush view of what constitutes a voting ''error.'' Bush, backed by Harris, said that voting errors that could trigger manual counts were limited to those resulting from a vote-counting machine breakdown. ''We disagree,'' the court said. The justices said in their unanimous opinion that the law allows an extension of the recount deadline ''for any kind of mistake.''
That could include a mistake by a voter who, for any one of a number of reasons, did not fully punch out a ''chad'' from the ballot. As a result, the court said it is appropriate to have an extension of the recount deadline to allow the fullest chance to determine intent of the voters. Indeed, the court noted that state law says ''no vote shall be declared or void if there is a clear indication of the intent of the voter.''
The Florida Supreme Court cited the decision by the Illinois Supreme Court to provide some guidance on how to deal with the now-famous hanging chads.
''Voters should not be disenfranchised where their intent may be ascertained with reasonable certainty, simply because the chad they punched did not dislodge completely from the ballot,'' the Illinois decision said. ''Such a failure may be attributable to the fault of the election authorities, for failing to provide properly perforated paper, or it may be the result of the voter's disability or inadvertence. Whatever the reason, where the intention of the voter can be fairly and satisfactorily ascertained, that intention should be given effect.''
The Florida court's decision to allow the intent of the voter to be determined by the canvassing boards drew concern from Republicans.
''I am concerned that every local election board is controlled by Democrats,'' Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said on CNN last night, referring to the boards in the counties where recounts are taking place, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade.
Bush, himself, last week summed up his argument against an extension of the Nov. 14 recount deadline, saying that machines are more reliable vote counters than human beings. ''Additional manual counts of votes that have been counted and recounted will make the process less accurate, not more so,'' Bush said.
But the court rejected that argument, saying, ''Our society has not yet gone so far as to place blind faith in machines.''
Just as the Supreme Court is a check on the legislature and the governor, humans provide a check on the power of machines. ''Humans routinely check the power of machines,'' the court said.
More generally, the court was upholding a time-honored legal choice of people over process when it comes to election disputes. ''Twenty-five years ago, this court commented that the will of the people, not a hyper-technical reliance upon statutory provisions, should be our guiding principle in election cases,'' said the court, citing precedent from the 1970s. ''We consistently have adhered to the principle that the will of the people is the paramount consideration,'' the justices said.
A Georgetown University law professor, Susan Low Bloch, said that the court had to resolve an inherent conflict between the deadline and the time needed for a manual count.
''The conflict is that the votes had to be certified within seven days of the election, but there was also a right of candidates to request a manual recount,'' Bloch said. ''The court resolved that conflict by saying that the right of the people to have their votes counted was paramount to the 7-day deadline.''
The Florida court stayed well within the legal mainstream, said Bloch. American judges have historically honored the election process as an elemental right, not to be trifled with, or burdened by excessive regulations.
Stephen Hess, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, said the ruling ''means Gore is not only still in the ballgame, but maybe has a real opportunity to win it.''
But the game is not over yet.
''The recounts to date have made very few changes,'' Hess said. ''So tune in, there is more to this story.''
