By 6-1 vote, they tell U.S. court they relied on statute to extend the deadline for counting ballots last month.
Chief justice objects to the timing.
By a 6-1 vote Monday, the state court said that the new deadline did not constitute creation of new law, but represented an interpretation of existing state law. Based on this court's status as the ultimate arbiter of conflicting Florida law, we conclude that our construction . . . The 41-page response came as the U.S. Supreme Court considered an appeal of a separate Florida high court decision. In that case, the U.S. court must decide whether the state court violated federal law when it voted last Friday to allow manual recounts of disputed presidential ballots in Florida. Late last month, the state high court allowed hand recounting of votes for 12 days after the state's normal vote-counting cutoff date of Nov. 14.