Florida Recount

“I AM NOT going to interfere with the U.S. Supreme Court,” state Circuit Judge N. Sanders Sauls told lawyers from the bench Tuesday in Tallahassee. Sauls said he understood the time pressures behind Gore’s request that county clerks or judges immediately get to work counting about 13,000 disputed ballots by hand in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties. But he said he didn’t believe a decision on whether there should be a hand recount …

…recount on time. Both presidential campaigns filed written arguments Tuesday outlining the cases they intend to make Friday when the court steps into the middle of a presidential election for the first time in American history. Bush’s brief asks the court to overturn the Florida Supreme Court’s ruling last week that required Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris to accept hand-counted ballots after Nov. 14, the deadline she said was set by state law.