Bill Hemmer with the latest from Tallahassee

Bill Hemmer

CNN Correspondent Bill Hemmer is reporting on the election battle from in front of the Florida State Supreme Court building in Tallahassee.

Q: How long have you been staking out the Florida Supreme Court for this story?

HEMMER: I've been here 17 days and counting. We flew in here on November 8. That was a Wednesday and we thought we'd be home by that Friday night, the tenth. We're looking at December right now. I celebrated my 36th birthday here, on November 14, I celebrated Thanksgiving here and I'm hoping I'm not going to be celebrating Christmas here.

Q: How has the atmosphere in front of the courthouse changed over the course of the story?

HEMMER: It's always changing. The fascinating thing about this story is this thing has been changing every 15 minutes for about 17 days. The one thing you can be clear on in this deal is that nothing is clear. Nothing. Yesterday at Thanksgiving we expected it to be dead but then the Supreme Court rejected Gore's appeal.

Q: The weather looks like it's been changing a lot as well.

HEMMER: Right now it's really kicked up. I know they call it the Sunshine State but we've seen every variety of weather possible. A couple of mornings it's been extremely cold. The weather's been as wild as the story here. I think there's a tornado watch right now if you can believe it.

Q: You referred to "Camp Recount" on the air. What exactly is that?

HEMMER: That's a term thought up by one of our CNN folks down here. It's about a three-city-block area where you see nothing but satellite truck after satellite truck. I've covered a lot of stories but I've never seen more satellite trucks in one location.

Q: Do you have much down time in Tallahassee when you're not covering the story?

HEMMER: We've had some pretty long days down here. It's a very intellectual story in the sense that you have court cases, legal battles and high-minded attorneys. There's no sex and murder in this. It's democracy at work, deciphering legal briefs.