The proceedings began this afternoon with the first reading in both houses of a resolution the must pass before choosing electors.
Then, he said, a determination could be made as to whether any effort by the loser to contest such results would jeopardize choosing Florida's electors before the federal deadline, a week before the Electoral College is to meet on Dec. 18.
They were delayed here for nearly two weeks after Wolfgang fell ill, but he was well enough to perform before the Elector, with Nannerl, on 22 November.
If recounts did not change any Electoral College votes, both sides could lobby electors to switch before they met in state capitals on Dec. 17.
There have been "faithless electors" before, but none when it really mattered.
Republican legislators said they were determined to ratify Governor Bush's slate of electors before Dec. 12, the deadline for naming members of the Electoral College.
It says that if a state, before choosing presidential electors, has enacted laws on the handling of any contest "by judicial or other methods," determinations under those laws shall be conclusive when the electoral vote is counted.
In response, Representative Dan Gelber, a Democrat from Miami Beach, who had spent five hours listening to debate in the House on appointing electors before voting against it, said, "I think this decision obviates the need for the special session.
Kathleen M. Sullivan, the dean of Stanford Law School who worked on the Democrats Supreme Courtt brief, said that Democrats could seek a federal court injunction against the Legislature if it named a slate of electors before it was clear that the state had failed to make a choice in the election.
Though the court rejected Mr. Bush's assertion that manually counted votes should be excluded from Florida's final ballot tabulation, it provided a sensible and orderly procedure for concluding the recount in time for Mr. Bush or Mr. Gore to contest the outcome before Florida's electors are chosen.
