Bush-Gore Florida recount must be finished by Thursday

Presidency hangs on outcome

VIDEO Watch from the broadcast as CNN gives Gore, then Bush then neither the Florida vote (November 8) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)   MESSAGE BOARD Election 2000

HOLLYWOOD, Florida (CNN) -- Florida election officials said today that a recount of the state's ultra-tight race between Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore must be completed by the close of business on Thursday.

Attorney General Bob Butterworth tells CNN that a recount is "automatic" in Florida if the margin between two candidates is within 1/2 of 1 percent.

At 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, Bush led Gore by 1,785 votes -- 2,909,136 to 2,907,351, election officials said.

"Those are preliminary and unofficial figures," state election official Ed Kast told CNN. "Those are not by any means official."

Butterworth said the election had put Florida in an international spotlight.

"Florida has been put in a position of determining who the next president of the United States is going to be," Butterworth said. "We owe something to the state, to the country, and really to the world."

Florida's recount will be coordinated by 67 supervisors of elections and overseen by a county judge, a county commissioner and a representative from the media.

"Mostly all of our supervisors of elections have computers where all of the ballots are in their office, right there," Butterworth said. "All they have to do is run them through their computers."

Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth tells CNN that a recount is "automatic" in Florida if the margin between two candidates is within 1/2 of 1 percent

Smaller Florida counties without computers may be forced to count votes by hand. But Butterworth said that would not be a problem and the recount would be completed and verified "quickly."

"I would hope that by the end of today ... this issue will be over," Butterworth said.

But overseas ballots -- which can arrive as late as 10 days after Election Day -- would still remain uncounted by the end of today, Kast said.

Several Florida counties -- including Citrus, Henry, Hillsborough, Volusia and Okeechobee -- had not reported their absentee ballots, Kast said.

In addition, officials in Palm Beach County received a number of complaints from voters about "a different type of ballot ... some people said it did cause confusion; we do not know that yet," Butterworth said.

He referred to a punch card ballot that had the names of the presidential candidates on two pages instead of one and led to complaints by some voters who said they feared they voted for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan when they had intended to vote for Gore.

Gore campaign officials said they were prepared to accept the results of a recount so long as it is "handled fairly" and competently.

"Vice President Gore and Senator (Joe) Lieberman are fully prepared to concede and to support Governor Bush if and when he is officially elected president," said Gore campaign chairman William Daley.

In Austin, Texas, Bush campaign chairman Don Evans predicted Bush would eventually be declared the winner.

"We hope and believe we have elected the next president of the United States," Evans said. "They're still counting and I'm confident, when it's all said and done, we will prevail."