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DECEMBER 4, 2000

After hearing 26 hours of arguments, a Florida judge is expected today to decide if some 14,000 disputed ballots will be manually recounted there.

Although Leon County Circuit Judge N. Sanders Sauls early in the day said he wanted to wrap up the hearing by noon, it instead lasted till 11PM in Tallahassee. Part of the delay was attributed to lack of preparation of lawyers on both sides of the issue.

Lawyers for Vice President Al Gore confronted an elections expert for Texas George W. Bush's team, who said manual recounts were necessary in close elections. John Ahmann also admitted his own vote-counting machines were subject to failure and had submitted an updated patent application for an improved machine.

Ahmann also said if the so-called "chads" are cleared from voting machines, there should be no problem with them. But a lawyer for Gore presented evidence that the machines in Miami-Dade county hadn't been clered in eight years.

Dr. Laurentius Marais, a statistician for the Bush team, testified that assumptions made by the Gore campaign on potential vote outcomes were fault. Bush lawyers also said the repeated handling of ballots has rendered them too damaged to be counted now.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court went to work on Saturday to consider if they should overturn a Florida decision which extended the state's certification deadline. On Friday, they questioned whether or not they should even be involved in the matter.

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