The legal skirmishing quickened in the overtime race for the White House as Al Gore’s lawyers argued Sunday night that painstaking election recounts have been allowed “since our nation’s founding.” Republicans said the practice exposes decisive Florida to political “mischief” and human error in Democratic-controlled counties.

Updated voting figures in Florida gave Republican George W. Bush a 288-vote margin out of some 6 million votes cast with recounts under way in four counties. The vice president leads in the nationwide popular vote but the Electoral College tally is so close that whoever takes Florida almost certainly will win the White House.

Both parties previewed their legal strategies for a federal court hearing today on Bush’s request to block manual recounts. Top Bush adviser James A. Baker III said the GOP legal team will argue that manual recounts in only four of Florida’s 67 counties would constitute unequal treatment under the 14th Amendment.

Baker said Florida has no uniform standard for reviewing the ballots, and suggested that Democrats who control the contested counties would play favorites.

“It’s all subjective, and therefore it presents terrible problems of human error and potential for mischief,” Baker said.

A statewide machine-operated recount has already narrowed Bush’s lead.

Baker’s rival, Gore consigliere Warren Christopher, portrayed vote recounts as a routine necessity of democracy.

“If at the end of the day, George Bush has more votes in Florida than we do, certainly the vice president will concede,” Christopher said, even while leaving open the prospect of court action if recounting ends with Bush still ahead.

Democrats filed court papers Sunday night on behalf of Gore, arguing that Florida’s manual ballot law is constitutional. Led by Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe, party lawyers also said Bush’s complaints threaten Florida’s right to run its own elections.

Bush is arguing against a system that “reflects an electoral practice - the handcounting of ballots - in effect throughout the country since the nation’s founding, yet here alleged to be unconstitutional and indeed to be vulnerable to a form of judicial intervention extraordinary in our federalism,” the Gore reply says.

The marshaling of legal forces sets the stage for one of the most dramatic periods in American political history. A climax could come at the end of this week when final overseas mail-in ballots will be counted and the trailing candidate would be forced to concede or push deeper into uncharted waters.

“By next Friday,” said Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., “the pressure on someone is going to be enormous to accept whatever results Florida has reached.”

Among the weekend developments: