Bush Vs Gore — The campaign now moves to courts

The final machine recount in Florida put Bush ahead by 327 votes — pending absentee ballots — out of some 6 million votes cast in the state. The Bush camp declared him the winner, but the Democrats secured a positive ruling on their demand for a manual recounting of votes in four heavily Democratic counties.

The Democrat demand was because they felt the counting machines had overlooked what they call “undervotes”. When machinesscan ballots, they do not count those ballots which are punched but in which the round shard of paper has not fully detached and fallen off the ballot to make aclear hole.

Democrats estimate there are 26,000 “undervotes” in the four counties expected to manually recount beginning Saturday morning. Knocking of the shardsduring the hand count could easily result in a 500 to 1,000 votes plus for Gore — enough to overhaul the 327 vote deficit.

Republicans are now readying strategy to challenge the counting in other states where Gore has won by a small margin.

Already, one such state — New Mexico — that was called for Gore has changed hands in a recount. It now transpires that Bush may have won that state by 17votes. New Mexico has four electoral votes.

Oregon, another laggard state, is still counting because it is the first state to go completely postal. The state saw a 80 per cent turnover of ballots, manyof which are still trickling in. But AP has projected Gore the winner of Oregon’s seven electoral votes by a narrow margin.

These late results and changes make no substantial difference to the Presidential sweepstakes that still depends on which way Florida goes. And Florida isn’t going any which way just yet.

But in what appeared to be an unseemly haste to declare himself a winner, Bush gathered his war council around him in a Presidential setting and began talkingtransition.

“It’s in our country’s best interest that we plan in a responsible way for a possible administration,” said Bush, surrounded by his running mate Dick Cheney, foreign policy advisor Condoleeza Rice, and likely chief of staff Andrew Card. A band-aid covered a boil on his right cheek.

Meanwhile, Gore allowed television cameras to shoot footage of him playing touch football with his family in Washington. Wearing jeans and sneakers, thevice-president seemed relaxed and uncaring about the verbal war raging around the country.

When reporters asked him about the election, Gore quipped, “I think we are going to win this game. We’re ahead 6-0, so I’m very optimistic.” Grinning, he thenadded, “I’m talking about the touch football game.”

It is now certain no matter who finally comes to office, it will be a bittersweet victory that will inhibit effective functioning.

If Bush comes to White House, he can conceivably overcome the stigma given the Republican majority in Senate and Congress, although his lack of popular votemajority will haunt him. If Gore wins, everyone will remember the trouble he went through and the lengths he went to before he was awarded a win.

Some quarters have already begun proffering healing measures. The Dallas Morning News, a pro-Bush paper, has suggested editorially that if Bush wins, he should choose Lieberman as Vice-President and if Gore wins, he could pick Colin Powell as Secretary of State. It is not such an outlandish suggestion in this country.Clinton chose Republican Senator William Cohen as his Secretary of Defense.

Clinton, meanwhile, phoned Gore on Friday morning and asked him to “hang in there”, without offering any remedy or solution. Clinton and his Senator-elect wife are leaving for Vietnam on Sunday on a pre-scheduled trip.