The United States will face a "civil rights explosion" if the Supreme Court refuses to allow a recount of disputed ballots in Florida as part of a solution to the presidential election impasse, a prominent civil rights leader warned yesterday.
"Even if this court rules against counting our vote, it will simply create a civil rights explosion," said the Rev Jesse Jackson as he emerged from the historic hearing, in which nine justices heard oral arguments from lawyers for Republican Mr George Bush and his Democratic rival, Mr Al Gore.
"People will not surrender to this tyranny," he stressed, pointing out that civil rights and labour organisations had agreed to launch a protest campaign.
"This people will not stand by and accept this with surrender," Mr Jackson warned. "We can afford to lose an election - you win some, you lose some. You can't afford to lose your franchise.
"People will be fighting for their right to vote and for their vote to count," he said.
"The same forces that were against the Voting Rights Act of 1965 . . . seek to disenfranchise us in 2000 and do not want to renew the Voting Rights Act in the year 2007," he added.
Should the Supreme Court rule against manual recounts, Mr Gore's bid for the presidency is likely to be effectively over.
Both Mr Bush and Mr Gore need a victory in Florida to win the election. After the official certification of results in the state last month, Mr Bush holds a lead of 537 votes.
Mr Jackson's comments matched the sombre mood of other prominent Democrats who were invited to the hearing.
Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, made clear that he was not particularly encouraged by what he heard in the courtroom.
"If the Supreme Court continues to wade into this thicket and they make substantive rulings on behalf of the petitioner, which is George Bush in this case, this court could go down in history, will go down in history, as the most interventionist court ever in deciding a political matter," the Iowa senator argued.
Mr Harkin warned that votes in Florida will be recounted regardless of the Supreme Court decision, because Democratic supporters were likely to get access to the ballots under the Freedom of Information Act.
"The truth will come out," said the senator. "If this Supreme Court decides to stop those counts right now and if the truth comes out that in fact Al Gore did win Florida and he did win the popular vote in the country and he is not President of the United States, what is this going to do to the esteem and the respect of the Supreme Court of the United States?"
A Democratic Representative, Ms Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, who is a member of the Black Caucus, said she heard "nothing" in both sides' arguments yesterday that should compel the justices to reverse the ruling of the Florida Supreme Court, which had allowed a manual recount of the undervote.
"I see no reason for the justices to change a tradition of this court, a conservative non-activist court, to now change their viewpoint," Ms Lee said.
The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr Orrin Hatch of Utah, predicted the Supreme Court would come down 5-4 or 6-3 on Mr Bush's side.