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A transfixed nation turned its eyes to Florida’s Supreme Court, where an army of lawyers for Al Gore and George W. Bush battled Monday over whether the marathon election should drag on. Weary recount workers pecked through ballots in three Democratic-leaning counties, wondering if their labor would be for naught. 

After 13 days of suspended political animation, lawsuits and countersuits, “chads” and “pregnant chads,” the presidential election may come down to this: Seven justices, all appointed by Democratic governors, will decide if the GOP secretary of state can certify Bush’s minuscule lead without accepting votes counted by hand. 

Bush’s official lead stands at 930 votes. Gore picked up 154 votes in manual recounts by late Monday, which if counted would reduce Bush’s margin to 776. Gore advisers were frustrated by their relatively small gains and worried that they would not overtake Bush; Bush’s forces cried foul in the county where the vice president gained the most ground. 

The historic Supreme Court hearing opened with a court marshal bellowing, “God save these United States,” and the justices got right down to business —– peppering lawyers with questions of law in a case riddled with political landmines. 

Chief Justice Charles Wells pressed both sides about how long the state might wait to certify its election results without jeopardizing its 25-vote stake in the Dec. 18 roll call of the Electoral College. His questions sketched a scenario in which recounts might continue, perhaps into December. 

“Tell me when Florida’s electoral vote would be in jeopardy,” Wells said again and again. “Why wouldn’t it be in this unique circumstance a better thing to do to wait” to certify vote totals. 

Justice Barbara Pariente asked whether selective recounts were unfair to voters who live in counties where the ballots were tabulated only once – a point that Bush has made in his legal filings. 

Gore lawyer David Boies said “there is going to have to be a lot of judgment applied by the court” to set uniform standards for approving ballots by hand, but he asked the court to do just that. GOP attorneys had their turn, which they used to suggest that Democrats were twisting Florida’s law for political purposes. 

“Federal law will not allow this court or the Florida legislature to change the rules of the election after the election has taken place,” Bush lawyer Michael Carvin said. 

The proceedings were carried live on the major television networks, providing Americans with a short course in constitutional and election law. 

A number of Bush’s political advisers were unsettled by the Supreme Court’s line of questioning, and feared the justices had laid the groundwork for giving Gore the right to hand counts. Those hand counts would turn the election Gore’s way, one senior Republican fretted; others cautioned against reading too much into the two-hour arguments. 

The GOP legal team expressed private concerns about the reception before the Florida Supreme Court, and pondered options that could include an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if the recounting is permitted to continue. 

Gore’s advisers were hopeful of victory, though pragmatic enough to tell fellow Democrats they likely would urge the vice president to give up without a protracted legal fight if the state Supreme Court rejects manual recounts. 

The court’s decision is expected Tuesday or later. 

Miles from the legal wrangling, hundreds of workers in three Democratic-leaning counties continued manual recounts that have yielded Gore surprisingly few new votes. In one county, at least, Bush appeared to be holding his own. “There’s been very little change,” in the margin between the two men, said Judge Charles Burton, the head of the Palm Beach County canvassing board. 

Down the coast, Broward County elections supervisor Jane Carroll, 70, said the long recount was taking its toll on workers. 

“I feel like I’m incarcerated,” she said, hours before quitting her post, “with lunch and dinner brought into me and six attorneys sitting across from me the entire day.” She was quickly replaced so counting wouldn’t come to a screeching halt when she took her leave. 

The candidates, too, are prisoners to the stalemate in Florida, where the winner gets 25 electoral votes and keys to the White House. Aides said the presidents-in-waiting were anxious, but focused on this critical legal step – with little discussion under way about what might happen if they lose the Supreme Court fight. 

“Feeling great!” the Texas governor told reporters summoned to the Capitol in Austin to watch him head to work. 

Gore opened a satellite address to a family-policy conference with a scripted glibness. “I appreciate this chance to speak to the Florida Supreme Court,” the vice president said. 

The conference was scheduled for the summer, but Gore moved it to avoid conflict with the campaign season. “I just assumed by November 20 the election would be over with,” he said with a forced chuckle. 

Trying to defuse a growing controversy, Attorney General Bob Butterworth, a Gore ally, urged counties to reconsider discarded overseas absentee ballots from military personnel and seek a “clarifying opinion” from GOP Secretary of State Katherine Harris. Democrats were criticized over the weekend for aggressively challenging ballots that had no postmarks from military outposts; Butterworth’s opinion sought to throw the dispute to Harris, who has refused to lift the state deadline for accepting Democratic recounts. 

Polls show the public is divided on whether the turmoil in Florida would eventually produce a fair and accurate outcome. Still, more than 80 percent of Americans said they would accept either Gore or Bush as the “legitimate president” in the end. 

The Supreme Court case was focused on Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties, where more than 1.5 million votes were cast, a majority by Democrats. Gore needs the Supreme Court to approve the recounts and give county officials wide latitude for determining the intent of voters who cast disputed ballots. 

In Broward County, the board had been setting aside any ballots that did not have two corners poked out of the chad – the scrap of paper in a punch-card ballot. But all three board members agreed Sunday to re-evaluate ballots with a slight indentation, just one corner of the chad poked out or other questionable chads.