By Will Lester
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2000; 6:21 a.m. EST

WASHINGTON –– Florida election officials prepared for a recount in their stunningly close election for president after the margin between George W. Bush and Al Gore shrank through the night.

At last count, Bush led Gore by 1,655 votes in the unofficial Associated Press count with all precincts reporting but an unknown number of absentee ballots yet to be counted. Some vote counts had the margin slightly higher or closer. The total vote in Florida was nearly 6 million.

Gore and Bush were tied at 48 percent apiece in the national vote in the early hours Wednesday. The pressure on the recount was intense because Florida, with its 25 electoral votes, is the state that will likely decide the winner of this closely contested presidential election.

Florida election law requires an automatic vote recount if the margin of difference is less than one half of 1 percent unless the losing candidate declines to call for a recount.

Several Florida counties still have absentee ballots yet to count and elections officials expect several thousand votes from overseas. Election officials weren't sure how long it would take this time, but said overseas residents have 10 days for their ballots postmarked by Election Day to get to election officials. The margin that would trigger the automatic recount with an election of just under 6 million votes, is slightly less than 30,000 votes. The Gore campaign said it would send a team of Democratic lawyers and vote-counters to monitor the recount.

Division of Elections Director Clay Roberts said lawyers were also trying to determine how that would work and also had to gather the state's absentee ballots. The state sent out 585,000 absentee ballots, but 416,000 had been returned by late Monday. Only a few thousand were expected to be returned from overseas. "If history is any guide, in 1996 after the close of the polls we received about 2,300 ballots," Roberts said.

Florida elections officials said they didn't know whether they would have to wait the full 10 days before calling the election. "Being this is the situation that hasn't come up, I'm going to have to get together with my lawyers," Roberts said. "It has not been a fun night."

After it appeared Bush had won Florida, Bush was declared the winner of the presidency by several of the networks, and his supporters began to celebrate. But the vote margin shrank steadily as late reports came in from heavily Democratic Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Gore called Bush to concede defeat in the early morning hours, and then called back to retract the concession. His campaign chairman, William Daley, later appeared before Gore supporters in Nashville, Tenn., to say the Gore campaign would request a recount.

"This race is simply too close to call and until the recount is concluded and the results of Florida become official, our campaign continues," Daley said.

Bush campaign chairman Don Evans told a crowd in Austin, Texas, that the Bush campaign was ready to claim victory, but acknowledged the race was extremely close.

"We hope and believe we have elected the next president of the United States," he said. "The latest count shows Governor Bush winning that state by more than 1,200 votes. They are still counting and I am confident when it is all said and done, we will prevail."

Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth, who is also Gore's Florida campaign chairman, said all parties involved needed rest, but added: "The Florida vote will be an accurate vote for whichever candidate it might fall for."

The chaos in Florida was likely to be intensified by voter confusion in Palm Beach County when several dozen voters said they voted for Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore because of ballots that were not clearly marked and had an arrow from Gore's name, listed second, pointing to the third hole on the ballot. Elections officials said the confusion was caused by making type on the ballots larger so voters could read them.

Florida had to recount an extremely close vote in the 1988 Senate race between U.S. Reps. Connie Mack, a Republican, and Buddy MacKay, a Democrat. In that race, more than 3.9 million votes were cast and only 3,000 votes separated Mack and MacKay. MacKay did not concede defeat until eight days later, after an examination of the votes in five large counties had been completed.