As for the Bush assertion that the Gore post-certification contest would be doomed, the Gore reply brief today described the argument as a "breathtaking" and invalid request to have the Supreme Court "declare the game over".
Finally the Amended Answer Brief of the Secretary of State asserted that: "Petitioner has confused a pre-certification election protest (section 102.166) with a post-certification contest (section 102.168).
The protest takes place before certification; the contest takes place after certification".
And finally, a candidate, elector, or taxpayer can "contest" the certification of election results by filing a post- certification action in circuit court within certain time limits and setting forth specific grounds.
Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus moved to contest the certification of the Ohio votes.
If the justices overturn the Florida Supreme Court's ruling, they may do so in a way that preserves Mr. Gore's right to contest the certification of Mr. Bush as the victor, as he is continuing to do.
Following are excerpts from a complaint by the Gore campaign filed yesterday in Leon County Circuit Court contesting the results of the Florida election: This is an action to contest the certification that George W. Bush and Richard Cheney received more votes in the presidential election in the State of Florida than Al Gore and Joe Lieberman.
But many of the lawyers advising Mr. Gore had preferred waiting until after the certification to pursue the contest route, both because they are familiar with it and because it is considered a more flexible legal method of getting an election overturned.
Training Camp, an IT training and certification firm, launched a contest that will utilize viral videos in an attempt to bring awareness to the issue of veteran unemployment.
Further, the Bush team maintains that such a reversion to the original vote-counting deadline would mean that the essential claims of Vice President Gore's new state-court lawsuit contesting the certification "will be rendered invalid".
So the court provided, under what it termed its "equitable powers," that in certifying final returns, Katherine Harris, the Florida secretary of state, could ignore returns filed after next Monday morning, because including them could "preclude a candidate from contesting the certification or preclude Florida's voters from participating fully in the federal electoral process".
