The assembly, in turn, will draft a constitution while governing the country until the first constitutional elections.
With an interim administration and constitutional elections scheduled for later this year, some worried Tunisians are already complaining that their revolution may be stolen from them.
Prof. Samuel Issacharoff, an expert in constitutional and election law at Columbia Law School, agreed.
While the state party has based its case on constitutional rights, election experts say fights like the one in Idaho often signal a shift toward more ideological politics.
Who will show up? A. Will older Texans — the ones who vote in every bond, school board, City Council and constitutional amendment election — own the day?
Experts on constitutional and election law said the case raised significant issues, though they said it faced hurdles because federal courts are often reluctant to step into state election controversies.
But in interviews yesterday, several constitutional and election law experts said that if Mr. Gore's lawyers defied predictions in this morning's arguments in the Supreme Court and convinced the justices that the recount should continue, the so-called deadline would not prevent it.
A distinctive feature of our constitutional system — elections that are quadrennial for president but biennial for the House of Representatives — magnifies these effects.
Houston, with a mayoral race and the "eighth wonder of the world" on the ballot, could account for one-third of the votes in November's constitutional-amendment election on $2 billion for water projects around the state.
Since its victory in the constitutional assembly elections in October last year, Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party that leads the government in a coalition with two secular parties, has tried to reassure Tunisians that it would respect liberal democratic values and not impose a strict Muslim moral code.
