WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.-As the quest for the presidency ended its grueling second post-election week with no end in sight, a Florida circuit judge ruled yesterday that Palm Beach County voters are not entitled to another chance to cast their ballots.
Citing federal law dictating that presidential elections must take place only on one day, Judge Jorge Labarga dismissed several lawsuits filed on behalf of Palm Beach County voters who said they were disenfranchised by the county's much-publicized "butterfly" ballot.
The plaintiffs, who filed an appeal of Labarga's decision late yesterday, alleged the county's ballot violated several state statutes and caused them to vote inadvertently for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan instead of Vice President Al Gore (D).
While Labarga's ruling greatly diminished the chances of another vote in Palm Beach County, election officials in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade continued the painstaking task of hand counting the region's almost two million ballots.
Not including the partially completed hand recounts, Texas Gov. George W. Bush (R) now leads Gore by 930 votes in Florida.
The eventual recipient of the Sunshine State's 25 electoral votes will capture the White House.
In West Palm Beach, where hand counting continued yesterday, Republican and Democratic protesters clashed over the fairness of the recounts in what has become an increasingly hostile public debate.
At some points yesterday, county sheriffs had to separate the protesters as accusations of impropriety were flung back and forth.
Toting signs reading, "Don't be had by chad" and "If you can read this sign, you probably voted Republican," GOP demonstrators, who greatly outnumbered their Democratic counterparts, denounced the hand counts while accusing elections officials in the predominately Democratic county of fraud and ballot tampering.
Democrats countered with their own accusations of an unnecessary rush to judgment and called on the "will of the people" to prevail.
"I really have a problem with hand counting, and that's why we went to machine counting to begin with," said Boynton Beach resident Brian Chalker, a Bush supporter. "I don't think they're going to get an accurate count. The more they handle the ballots, the less accurate they are going to be."
Criticisms of the hand counts were not limited to protesters.
Speaking on behalf of the Bush campaign, spokesman Tucker Eskew called the hand counts "inherently flawed."
"It's a process that's prone to human error," Eskew said.
But Palm Beach County Judge Charles Burton, chairman of the county's vote canvassing board, said the allegations of impropriety are "false and insulting."
"Republicans are making their accusations and Democrats are making their accusations," Burton said. "But to me, there's no confusion, to me there's no problem with accuracy."
Palm Beach County is about halfway finished with its hand recount and Burton said neither Gore nor Bush has gained a significant number of votes thus far.
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