Court prolongs US poll confusion

Vital evidence: An official checks voting paper waste

Florida's Supreme Court has blocked the certification of the state's final results, which should decide whether George W Bush or Al Gore wins the White House.

Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris had planned to announce the results on Saturday, now that the final deadline for accepting postal ballots has passed.

Recounting the ballots - but will they count?

The ruling - overturning a lower court's ruling - means that the hand recount in two counties will go on.

With returns in from 63 of Florida's 67 counties, unofficial figures including the postal ballots show the lead for Mr Bush increasing from about 300 to more than 700.

Recount continues

The Democrats argue that recounts in three key counties, involving hundreds of thousands of votes, could swing victory their way.

In delaying the final result, the Supreme Court said it had acted "in order to maintain the status quo", and set another hearing for Monday afternoon.

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The court said it wanted to hear arguments from Democrats and Republicans as to whether results from manual recounts of 1.7 million ballots in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties should be included in the final tally of 6 million state votes.

At stake are Florida's 25 electoral college votes which will give either candidate the 270 votes needed to win the election.

Bush: Absentee ballots boosted his lead

In the meantime, the hand recounts in the three counties are continuing.

Miami-Dade officials reversed their earlier position, voting on Friday to conduct a full manual recount.

In another blow to Republican hopes, an appeals court in Atlanta on Friday rejected a request on Mr Bush's behalf for an injunction to halt the recounting process.

Mixed poll messages

A poll for ABC News and the Washington Post shows that 56% of Americans believe it is more important for the election to be completed within a week than for the candidates to continue with court action.

However, an equal number want Florida's secretary of state to wait for the results of hand recounts before certifying the final result.

And only 50% believe that the result will be accurate.

Other states

At least three other closely-fought states face possible recounts.

In the closest presidential race outside Florida, Al Gore won New Mexico by 481 votes out of nearly 600,000 votes cast, according to an Associated Press tally.

One demonstrator has a simple solution...

In Wisconsin, an AP tally had Mr Gore defeating Governor Bush by 5,697 votes out of nearly 2.6 million votes cast.

And in Oregon, the margin of the Democrat's victory was 6,795 votes.

Mr Bush would need to overturn the results in all three states to win the White House if Florida ended up going to Al Gore.

The previously-contested state of Iowa is now safely in Mr Gore's hands, after Mr Bush said he would not seek to challenge the result.

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• Florida court rules out inclusion of manual recounts in final vote tally - Democrats appeal to Florida Supreme Court.
• Supreme Court blocks certification of final results, allowing manual recounts to go on
• Deadline for overseas votes midnight Friday
• Friday deadline for Wisconsin and Iowa recounts

• 20 November: Legal challenges over manual recounts to continue in Supreme Court
• 6 December deadline for New Mexico recount
• Early Dec deadline for Oregon recount

• 12 Dec: Electoral college votes with or without Florida
• 18 Dec: Electoral college meets in each state. Man with most votes is president

• 6 Jan: Congress counts electoral college votes. If no winner, House of Representatives chooses president and Senate vice-president
• 20 Jan: Inauguration Day. If no president chosen, House speaker is acting president

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