Election 2000: Florida Secretary of State Says No to Palm Beach County Deadline Extension
GENE RANDALL, CNN ANCHOR: As we learned from Bill Hemmer in Tallahassee just moments ago, Florida's secretary of state, Katherine Harris, is refusing the request by Palm Beach County elections officials to extend the deadline for getting in the recounted totals from 5:00 p.m. Eastern tonight until 9:00 a.m. on Monday. John King is here. He's been covering the Gore campaign. Good news or bad news for the vice president, or does it matter?</s>JOHN KING, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it matters in the sense that from a public relations standpoint, you will have the chief elections officer in the state of Florida stepping forward tonight and once again saying, "George W. Bush won the state; therefore, won the 25 electoral votes." If you are the vice president, you face the challenge now of convincing the American people that "This is not over, that these numbers do not count. Pay no attention to this, essentially. My fight continues in the courts." And he needs the support of the American people to keep the support of fellow Democrats.</s>RANDALL: John, is there at least private talk among those around Vice President Al Gore that one of the options he should at least be considering at this point is reaching a time when he will have to say, if he's trailing in the vote count tonight, where he will have to say, "Look. I have more court challenges that I could wage, but this is over. For the good of the country, I'm going to step back"?</s>KING: Is there such a time? Yes ...</s>RANDALL: Is there such a time?</s>KING: Democrats will tell you there is and it's probably next Friday or Saturday after the U.S. Supreme Court holds its hearing. Right now, Democrats feel no suffering personally from this, so they're supporting the vice president. He is filing suit tomorrow to try to get Miami-Dade to recount again, challenging the standard Palm Beach County used. If he loses those two fights -- if you have a Democratic vice president suing Democratic canvassing boards in two Florida counties -- pretty hard if he loses those two fights to then come out and say, "I want to sue some more." So they will run out of time shortly.</s>RANDALL: John, thank you very much -- Andria.</s>ANDRIA HALL, CNN ANCHOR: In Palm Beach County, despite a feverish last minute effort, officials say they need more time. But as we just heard reported, doesn't look like they're going to get it. Let's check in now with Bill Delaney who is West Palm Beach with the latest from there. Hi, Bill.</s>BILL DELANEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Andria, thank you very much. This will come -- I think it has come -- it has come by now as quite a blow to Judge Charles Burton, to Commissioner Carol Roberts, and Theresa LePore, the three members of this canvassing board here who have been working now since 8:00 yesterday morning with maybe just a two-hour nap in the middle of the night last night to try to get this count done. They now know, and we saw them leave</s>HALL: One can imagine mixed feelings from that canvassing board right now. Bill Delaney, thanks a lot. We appreciate it.