Bush leads; Gore supports legal fight

Two days after the presidential election, it is still unknown who will be the next president.\nThe race still hinges on Florida's 25 undecided electoral votes. \nAt 6:15 p.m. Thursday, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris announced post-election waiting will continue. Wednesday, Florida officials had announced a decisive recount would be finished by 5 p.m. Thursday. That didn't happen.\nHarris said the 14 counties being recounted have until Tuesday to make the ballots official. Until then, Harris said Bush is still ahead in Florida by 1,784 votes.\nBut by 11:45 p.m. The Associated Press, who produced regular updates from every Florida county, said the recount was as close as 229 votes in Bush's favor, with 66 of 67 counties reporting.\nHarris called the news reports of a shrinking Bush lead "preliminary" and said the count won't be over until overseas ballots are tallied. The deadline for overseas ballot totals is Nov. 17: 10 days after the election.\n"We will all remember these times as some of the most critical and defining in our nation's history," Harris said.\nFlorida agriculture commissioner Bob Crawford took the podium after Harris and responded to the "frustration" surrounding the election.\n"This is democracy in action," Crawford said. "If you want simplicity go about 90 miles south of the border and you have Cuba, where they have a lot of simplicity -- there is no election."\nAs Florida officials labor for an accurate count, the Bush camp is optimistic. Bush press representative Bob Hopkins said Bush will win and the recount will re-affirm that.\n"We want to get this process finalized and we want to make sure the results are accurate and accurately reflect the will of the people," Hopkins said.\nMeanwhile, Gore Campaign chairman Bill Daley took to the airwaves and pledged to support legal action in Florida, where protesters spent Thursday picketing a West Palm Beach courthouse demanding another vote.\nThe protests arose as a result of what many Florida residents are calling misleading ballots and the disqualification of 19,000 ballots which indicated votes for two candidates. Rev. Jesse Jackson, a Gore supporter, made an appearance in Florida Thursday afternoon, when he held up one of the protested Florida ballots and called it "fuzzy" -- a reference to the presidential debates, where Bush accused Gore of "fuzzy math." Gore campaign officials are asking for a hand count of voters in three counties that used "fuzzy" ballots.\n"If the will of the people is to prevail, Al Gore should be awarded a victory in Florida and should be the next president of the United States," Daley said.\nBush campaign strategist Carl Rove responded to the controversy by going on network TV and saying the cancellation of the ballots is not abnormal and its precedent is found in the cancellation of a similar amount of votes in the 1996 election.\nAs the opposing camps continued to refute each other, James A. Baker III, a former Secretary of State, was sent to Florida to represent Bush's interests there.\n"That ballot was posted, as required by Florida law, in newspapers and public places all over the state of Florida," Baker said. "And we haven't heard one gripe about that ballot until after the voting took place."\nThe Associated Press contributed to this story.