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Courts weigh military absentee ballots and manual recounts in Florida election dispute

Judge L. Ralph Smith presides over Friday hearing on military absentee ballots

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A Leon County Circuit Court judge heard arguments Friday on whether Florida election officials used illegal standards to reject hundreds of overseas military absentee ballots.

Republicans are asking the court to count overseas military ballots even if they bear an illegible, late or U.S. postmark, or lack a handwritten date, and even if the county can't locate the request for the absentee ballot or the signatures on the application and actual ballot don't match exactly.

The Bush campaign was contesting the election in 14 Florida counties, but dropped its complaint against Clay County during the hearing, saying county election officials answered their concerns.

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Judge L. Ralph Smith has not issued in a ruling in the case, but said he would have a hard time ordering a remedy in the case because he had not been shown any evidence that the county canvassing boards had violated the law.

Bush attorney Fred Bartlit Jr. told reporters after the hearing that the campaign brought the lawsuit because it did not seem that the counties were doing enough to make sure that the votes of military personnel are counted.

"The whole reason we brought this case was because people were saying the right thing, but it didn't look like they were doing the right thing," Bartlit said.

He said no one would admit to trying to block overseas service members' vote from being counted, but that Democrats are challenging those ballots in the counties.

Bartlit added that several counties have met with Bush's legal team since the lawsuit was filed.

The Gore campaign was not named in the lawsuit and did not send attorneys to the hearing.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear one of two petitions filed by attorneys for Bush seeking to stop the manual recounts from being conducted in Palm Beach and Broward Counties. They argued that the Florida Supreme Court violated federal law by allowing "arbitrary, standardless and selective" manual recounts.

Vice President Al Gore's legal team had argued that there is no constitutional issue involved and that the state courts' rulings should stand.

The Supreme Court has ordered both sides to submit briefs by Tuesday and oral arguments are scheduled for December 1st.

The manual recount is going forward in Broward County and Palm Beach County. The Palm Beach County Canvassing Board held a hearing Friday morning on how to count ballots with dimpled chad.

Election officials in Miami-Dade County voted to end its manual recount because they said they would not be able to complete it by the November 26th deadline set by the Florida Supreme Court. The Gore campaign went back to the Florida Supreme Court to ask it to order Miami-Dade County to resume the manual recount, but the court on Thursday rejected the request.

Gore attorney David Boies said that the campaign will go to court to contest the certified results of the Miami-Dade County vote, arguing that there should have been a hand recount there, and that the ballots that were counted before the hand recount was suspended should have been added to the final total.

And in Seminole County, a judge was set to hear evidence Monday on a lawsuit filed by a Democratic attorney alleging that a county elections official illegally allowed Republican officials to fill in missing information on 4,700 absentee ballot requests.

The suit asks that the 4,700 vote be thrown out if they can be identified, or if not, that all 15,000 absentee votes cast in the county be rejected.

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Lieberman says Dems not trying to block absentee ballots
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Florida State Courts
Florida Southern District Court
Electoral College
Volusia County government
Palm Beach County government

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