Vice-President Al Gore and Governor George Bush are battling each other in various courts as the deadline for declaring one of them the winner in Florida creeps nearer.
Mr Gore is hoping to keep hand recounts going, which may give him the extra votes he needs to win in the state. Mr Bush insists there have been enough recounts and that the official result will be the one announced tomorrow.
The Florida Secretary of State, Ms Katherine Harris, has infuriated the Gore campaign by declaring that the official result in Florida will be announced tomorrow, even if hand counts are still continuing in various counties.
Mr Bush leads by 300 votes, but this could change when the outstanding overseas votes are counted by midnight tonight. The winner in Florida, with its 25 electoral college votes, will win the presidential election, which took place 10 days ago - but it is also possible the loser would challenge the legality of the Florida result.
Mr Gore appealed yesterday to a court in Florida to make Ms Harris delay the official result until the hand counts in three mainly Democratic counties are completed, probably next week.
In a separate legal move, Mr Bush has brought his appeal to have the hand counts declared illegal to a federal appeals court in Atlanta which may give a ruling today. Late on Wednesday night Mr Bush rejected an offer by Mr Gore to have hand recounts in all the Florida counties over the next week and that the result would be accepted by both sides without any more court actions. Mr Bush also refused Mr Gore's proposal for a meeting as soon as possible "not to negotiate but to improve the tone of our dialogue in America".
Mr Bush said the hand recounts were "arbitrary and chaotic" and that both sides should accept the official result tomorrow. He said he would meet Mr Gore, but only after the election result, and he appealed "to make sure that those who speak for us do not poison our politics".
Ms Harris, who is a Republican supporter, shocked the Gore campaign when she announced she would not amend the results already certified from the state's 67 counties to take account of the ongoing hand recounts. The certified results show Mr Bush leading by 300 votes out of about six million cast.
In court yesterday the Gore campaign argued that Ms Harris was ignoring a previous court ruling that the hand counts could continue beyond last Tuesday's deadline and she could not "arbitrarily" ignore them. Ms Harris's lawyers said she did study the explanations from the three states for continuing their counts but found they were not justified under electoral law.
With an end to the long drawnout recounts in Florida in sight, tensions are increasing in the Gore and Bush camps as both sides struggle to win over public opinion in the closest presidential election in modern times.
Mr Gore's running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman, yesterday accused Ms Harris of wanting to "decide the election herself" and expressed concerns over her close links to the Bush camp. Mr Lieberman told ABC's Good Morning America that Ms Harris had taken steps aimed "totally" at not allowing votes to be counted.
"When it's over, I don't think anybody wants to become the next president of the United States with millions of people feeling that somehow the election was done unfairly and votes were not counted," he said.
The Governor of Florida, Mr Jeb Bush, brother of Mr George W. Bush, said Ms Harris was fulfilling her responsibility as the official charged with certifying the state results. He has withdrawn voluntarily from the certification process.
"She has a responsibility to carry out the law and part of that was that within seven days the ballots had to be certified. Subject to the courts weighing in on this, Saturday morning we will know who won the state." He added that it "broke his heart" to hear criticism of his state. "A handful of votes is creating a mis-impression about our state. We're a progressive state with tremendous things going on."
President Clinton, who was visiting Vietnam yesterday, refused to comment on what was happening in Florida. "I don't think I should get involved in that. The people deserve a full, fair count and I hope the process moves since they are over there debating it in the appropriate way."