A Federal court in Florida may decide today on the action Governor George Bush has begun to try to stop manual recounting of disputed Florida ballots which could give Vice-President Al Gore the necessary votes to make him the next president.
The recourse to a federal court in Florida was a reversal of the earlier Bush campaign policy of insisting that the courts should be kept out of the unprecedented controversy which has delayed the declaration of the winner of last week's presidential election.
Mr James Baker, the former Republican secretary of state, who is leading the Bush team in Florida, said the Democrats had effectively moved the issue into the courts by demanding manual recounts in Palm Beach County and other heavily Democratic counties and supporting court actions by Democrats there.
Mr Baker yesterday offered to drop the court action if the Democrats would agree to stop the manual recounts and accept the official result of the state-wide recount expected on Friday. "Whoever wins then wins," Mr Baker told NBC's Meet the Press. "We will accept that result."
There was no response to this offer by Mr Warren Christopher, a former Democratic secretary of state, who is Mr Baker's counterpart for the Gore campaign. Mr Christopher said on the same programme that he expected the outcome of the presidential election would be known in "a matter of days".
Calling the controversy a "black mark" on the American election process, Mr Baker also refused to rule out an appeal to the Supreme Court on the manual recounts if the federal courts in Florida did not rule against them.
Mr Gore and Mr Bush are keeping low profiles, leaving it to their campaigns to make public comments on the election. Mr Bush spent the weekend at his Texas ranch with his running mate, Mr Dick Cheney, while Mr Gore with his running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman, and their wives went to the cinema on Saturday evening.
President Clinton, in his weekly radio address, has urged the country to have patience. "The important thing for all of us to remember now is that a process for resolving the discrepancies and challenges to the election is in motion."
The official Florida recount of all 57 counties will not be announced until Friday when all the overseas ballots have been included. At the start of the recount, Mr Bush led by 1,747 votes but according to an unofficial tally by Associated Press this lead has been reduced to 327 votes not including all the overseas votes. This small lead could be wiped out altogether if the manual recounts are also admitted.
Florida, with its 25 electoral college votes, will almost certainly decide the presidential election. But faced with the prospect that Mr Gore could overtake Mr Bush in Florida, the Republicans are discussing demands for possible recounts in states which Mr Gore narrowly won such as Wisconsin, Iowa and Oregon.
The prospect of lengthy litigation is raising huge concern among political leaders, the media and among many voters. A Republican senator, Mr John McCain, of Arizona expressed his concern yesterday, saying: "I think the nation is growing a little weary of this. We're not in a constitutional crisis but the American people are growing weary and whoever wins is having a rapidly diminishing mandate, to say the least."
There will be increasing pressure on Mr Bush and Mr Gore to accept the outcome of the Florida recount as it is announced this Friday but this is not as simple as it appears. For Mr Bush this recount should not take into account the manual recounts in Palm Beach and three other counties and should be limited to the machine recount which has already taken place and including outstanding overseas votes.
For Mr Gore, the manual recounts are essential to ascertain the real will of the voters in Florida. The first sample manual recount in several Palm Beach precincts representing 1 per cent of the vote turned up 19 votes for Mr Gore beyond the machine count. Extrapolating from this, a full manual recount could result in 1,900 more votes for Mr Gore, said Ms Carol Roberts, a county commissioner.