The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the manual ballot recounts ordered by the Florida high court and Gore has suspended his contest of the state's presidential election results, prompting Republicans legislators to wonder whether their unprecedented effort is now moot. The Question of Intervention Before the full Senate recessed, the Ethics and Elections Committee voted 4-3 to approve a resolution that would have named a slate of 25 Bush electors. Now, his counterpart in the Senate is deciding whether or not the high court's 5-4 ruling against the recounts sought by the Gore campaign did exactly that. Yet McKay refused to call rule out a vote altogether, apparently fearing Florida's decisive 25 electoral votes might still be in jeopardy because of the post-Election Day legal wrangling. State Democrats, who had assailed the move as a partisan act, before the court's decision, renewed their opposition today.
Republicans say that is now up to to the vice president.
If Gore makes it unequivocal, I'm out of here. At issue is Tuesday's midnight ET deadline set by federal law for states to certify their presidential electors. The 6 million Floridians who cast ballots in the presidential election, they argued, were in danger of being disenfranchised. In the unlikely event that Republicans leaders do decide to act, there will be little Democrats can do to stop them, given the GOP's lopsided majorities in both chambers. Should the Senate pass its resolution, the House would have to vote second time because of minor differences in the two versions.