Bush edging ahead

Vital evidence: An official checks voting paper waste

Republican presidential candidate George W Bush has increased his lead in Florida leaving the courts as Al Gore's only apparent path to the White House.

With postal votes in from all 67 Florida counties, official figures show the Texas governor's advantage has stretched to 930.

Now the Democrats are hoping that a Supreme Court hearing on Monday will rule that 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 six million state votes.

Recounting the ballots - but will they count?

The Democrats argue that recounts in those three key counties could swing victory their way. Despite Mr Bush's increased lead, Gore campaigners say they are still confident the manual counts will yield enough votes to overturn the Republican gain.

But the Bush campaign says it has evidence that the manual recount is "fundamentally flawed and distorting the true intentions of the voters of Florida".

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

Results delayed

The official announcement of a final tally for Florida has been frozen until Monday at the earliest, when the court will reconvene to examine whether the manual recounts can be included.

In delaying the final result, the Supreme Court said it had acted "in order to maintain the status quo".

In a separate legal battle, Democrats are trying to have 4,700 absentee ballots thrown out, claiming irregularities.

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Bush: Absentee ballots boosted his lead

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

But it is possible that they will not be completed until December - further delaying the election of the 43rd president of the United States.

Our correspondent David Willis said all eyes will now be on the televised Supreme Court hearing on Monday though he suspected Democrats would try to "muddy the waters" over the recount.

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 passes at 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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