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Florida Supreme Court dismisses recount case

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TALLAHASSEE, Florida (CNN) -- By a unanimous 7-0 vote, the Florida Supreme Court has formally dismissed Vice President Al Gore's petition to count undervotes.

The Florida justices said Florida law just didn't provide the tools necessary to settle the dispute under guidelines issued by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The ruling has no effect on the presidential election since Gore has conceded the election to Republican George W. Bush.

The Florida court ruled after the court's order to count all 42,000 undervotes cast in Florida was reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court. An undervote is a ballot which a voting machine has recorded as having no vote for president.

The petition was dismissed Thursday with little fanfare. The justices said any motion for rehearing would be denied.

The case had been remanded to the state's high court Tuesday in the U.S. Supreme Court's decision. In its three-page order, the justices said they had no choice but to dismiss the case.

"On the date of the subject election, the Florida Election Code did not provide the elements necessary for a resolution of the disputed issues, based on the constitutional parameters expressed by the United States Supreme Court. Accordingly, relief cannot be granted, and this case is dismissed," the order read.

In another order Thursday, Florida's high court returned 9,000 ballots from Miami-Dade County and 3,000 from Palm Beach County to the Leon County courthouse, where the rest of the one million ballots trucked to Tallahassee are being stored.

The ballots were being held as evidence in the appeal before the Florida Supreme Court.

The undervotes -- ballots that did not register a selection for president after being run through ballot tabulation machines -- had been the main thrust of the Gore's challenge.

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