ORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - After all the shouting and the shoving, the demonstrations and denunciations, the contest became one of staying awake yesterday.
For almost six hours, Broward County election officials poked at disputed ballots, prodded ballots, held ballots up to the light - one by one by one. They debated chads, dimples, and detached corners. They squinted so much the audience almost got a headache.
By midafternoon, in time for turkey but far too soon to say which presidential candidate would win in Florida, Vice President Al Gore had a net gain of 217 votes, reducing George W. Bush's statewide lead to 713 votes. For its part, the canvassing board was thankful it got through an entire box of disputed ballots, leaving three more boxes to go by the 5 p.m. Sunday deadline set by the Florida Supreme Court.
''We'll get there,'' county commissioner and vote counter Suzanne Gunzburger vowed as she headed home.
That means 12-hour days or longer for Broward's canvassing board, the only one to convene on Thanksgiving. Palm Beach County, with even more ballots at stake, returns to its hand recount of ballots today. But Miami-Dade, citing electoral unfairness, has halted its recount.
In the hallway outside courtroom 6780 yesterday, Republican leaders swarmed by television cameras and microphones reiterated their belief in the unfairness of it all. Democrats countered with spin of their own. No one gave ground, including a local attorney who, in one of the day's few outbursts, was threatened with removal from the courtroom for questioning the board's quality assurance.
''A little sliver of light is not a vote,'' argued Bill Sherer, the attorney who used to do work for the local Republican party. ''They're consistently wrong.''
Peter Deutsch, a Democrat whose US congressional district includes Fort Lauderdale, said, ''They can pooh-pooh, but there is chad buildup and there is trouble with chads going through. They're doing visual inspection. It's not rocket science. It's not brain surgery.''
As they inspected ballots, the three board members - Gunzberger and two county judges - were mostly in agreement. This ballot was good, that one was bad. One for Bush, two more for Gore. Some decisions were 2-1, but no one argued over what kind of pizza to order for lunch. The most heated debate may have been over which monitors would sit where around the table.
The canvassers took one side, with the three Republican and three Democratic monitors on the other. That way, all six monitors could glimpse the 327 ballots handled yesterday just by craning their necks. The Democrats sounded happier than the Republicans with what they saw.
Montana Governor Marc Racicot, a Republican who was at the table, even stepped into the Sherer fray, telling the board it was ''making a serious mistake'' by not providing a clearer definition of the ballot standard. Democratic monitors defended the board, saying it was considering the ''totality of the ballot'' to determine voter intent. The phrase ''reasonable certainty'' came up again and again.
''There was some discussion early on and there was some contentiousness, but now they've gotten into the groove,'' Chris Sautter, a Democratic monitor, said at the midmorning break. ''The pace is picking up.''
It had better. With contested ballots from hundreds of precincts, the board may have 1,200 or more ballots yet to complete. At an average 40 to 60 seconds per ballot, that's more time than the trio has. The first four ballots took the longest to examine.
''We've got half a box to go,'' Judge Robert W. Lee said before the lunch break. ''Take a deep breath.'' Afterward he admonished Sherer for delaying the process when the board had so much work to do.
While the Gore campaign fought unsuccessfully to have the state Supreme Court order Miami-Dade to recount its own ballots, Republicans continued to argue that the entire process is undemocratic. US Representative E. Clay Shaw Jr., a Republican whose district includes the three counties whose votes are in dispute, insisted that other Florida residents were being disenfranchised by the limited recounts.
Along with Shaw, other Republicans argued that voter intent cannot be determined by a dimple, or the impression where the ballot was supposed to be punched. Just because someone voted for a Democrat in every other race, they said, did not mean he wanted Gore in the White House. Maybe he began to press the circle beside Gore's name, then changed his mind, as an affidavit provided by William J. Rohloff of Broward County indicated he had done.
''It's a terrible idea,'' said Shaw, whose November reelection required a hand sampling in six precincts because of the closeness of the race. ''If somebody got the rest of the ballot right, why wouldn't they get the top right, too?''
Democrats, however, continued to insist that the recount was not about a Gore victory, not about a Bush triumph. Instead, they said, it was about giving Florida voters a say in whomever becomes the next president.
The voters themselves showed little interest in yesterday's proceedings, or at least little willingness to go to the trouble of attending them. The proceedings had been moved from an easily accessible building to a sixth-floor courtroom that required two elevator rides and a long, winding walk to reach. Only a handful of local residents turned out for the session, giving everyone else something to be thankful for.
