The crisis over the result of the US Presidential election deepened yesterday as the recount neared an end in Florida with the Gore campaign indicating it would not accept that it could concede victory to Governor George Bush.
Late last night election officials announced that Florida's Palm Beach County, where there is a bitter dispute over 19,000 invalidated ballots, would not certify its results until it recounts votes by machine and by hand, starting on Saturday.
A final certification of the Florida recount cannot be made until all the overseas ballots have been counted. That count will go on until next Friday. Whoever wins Florida, with its 25 Electoral College votes, will win the election.
Unofficial tallies from Associated Press from 65 of the 67 counties gave Mr Bush a lead of 225 votes out of nearly six million. At the start of the count, Mr Bush led by 1,784 votes.
A war of words broke out between the two campaigns yesterday as Mr Gore's campaign manager, Mr William Daley, accused Mr Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney, of "crowning themselves the victors" before the Florida result was known. He also demanded a "hand recount of four counties in Florida, in addition to the full machine recount due to finish last night.
Mr Daley told a press conference that whatever the recount shows, the courts may find irregularities in the Florida results "an injustice unparalleled in our history".
But Mr Bush's campaign manager, Mr Don Evans, speaking in Austin, Texas, said that "if the recount . . . confirms the Election Day result that Governor Bush has been elected President of the United States, then I think it's only appropriate that yes, he thinks that's final."
The former secretary of state, Mr Warren Christopher, representing Mr Gore, said yesterday "We have come to believe serious and substantial irregularities resulted from this ballot."
The Gore campaign said it would support a lawsuit already filed in Boca Raton, Florida, by several voters. Mr Kendell Coffey, an attorney for Mr Gore, said "The ballot was completely illegal. There are a number of remedies available, and one of them is a new election in Palm Beach County."
As thousands of reporters waited outside in pouring rain, high-powered legal teams representing Mr Gore and Mr Bush were hunkered down inside the state capital building in Tallahassee overseeing the recount.
Much of the controversy stemmed from the so-called "butterfly" ballot design, used only in Palm Beach County. The ballot listed candidates on left and right sides, separated by punch holes.
Expecting that Mr Bush and Mr Gore would be listed number one and two in a vertical lay-out - as is traditional and required by law - it appears many voters punched the second hole, thinking they had voted for Mr Gore. Instead, they were voting for Mr Patrick Buchanan, a candidate of the right-wing Reform Party.
The confusion produced several results which Florida election officials are now dealing with. In Palm Beach County, 19,120 ballots - 4.1 per cent of the total - were disqualified because voters marked more than one presidential candidate.
Only 1.7 per cent of ballots were rejected for that reason in Broward County and only 2.7 per cent in Miami-Dade. Those counties listed presidential candidates on a single page.