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Fla. attorney who worked for Gore on recount dies

Tuesday - 9/17/2013, 4:09pm  ET

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- Dexter Douglass, one of the lead attorneys who represented Al Gore during the chaotic presidential election recount of 2000, has died.

Douglass was 83.

Lacy Douglass said her father, who had been battling bladder cancer, died early Tuesday morning at his home in Tallahassee.

Douglass -- who his daughter called a "staunch Democrat" -- was deeply involved in Florida politics and policy.

He was general counsel for former Gov. Lawton Chiles but left that job in order to guide a constitutional revision panel that made several sweeping changes to state government in 1998.

Douglass was one of the lawyers representing the former vice president to push to recount ballots cast in the election. The Florida Supreme Court narrowly approved a statewide recount but it was stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court. George W. Bush became president.
