Saturday, December 09, 2000

U.S. Supreme Court Orders Florida Recounts to
Stop


The 2000 Election The bitter division on the court, awkwardly papered over only last Monday with an order to
the Florida Supreme Court to clarify an earlier ruling, burst into the open with the action this
afternoon.

About 15 minutes before the Supreme Court order, the United States Court of Appeals for the
11th Circuit, in Atlanta, denied a request by the Bush lawyers to halt the recount. But the
court said said that the Florida secretary of state could not certify the results of the recount
until the Supreme Court ruled in the case.

The Supreme Court decision came just hours after lawyers for Mr. Gore had urged the United
States Supreme Court to let the counting of Florida's presidential votes proceed while the
court considers whether to hear Gov. George W. Bush's appeal of the Florida Supreme Court's
latest ruling.
It would be the
vice president, and not Governor Bush, who would suffer irreparable injury from a stay that
would push a final count beyond the Dec. 12 date set in the law known as Section 5, which
grants a "safe harbor" to electors chosen by that date.

"What a stay would do, of course," the Gore brief said, "is prevent Vice President Gore from
ever gaining the benefit of the Section 5 presumption."

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