Posted on 12/30/2004 6:25:14 PM PST by areafiftyone
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Two third-party presidential candidates asked a federal court Thursday to force a second recount of the Ohio vote, alleging county election boards altered votes and didn't follow proper procedures in the recount that ended this week.
Lawyers for Green Party candidate David Cobb and the Libertarian Party's Michael Badnarik made their request in federal court in Columbus.
The two candidates, who received less than 0.3 percent of the Ohio vote, paid $113,600 for a statewide recount after the vote was certified earlier this month by the secretary of state. They have said they don't expect to change the election results, but want to make sure that every vote is proply counted.
Ohio and its 20 electoral votes tipped the race to President Bush when Sen. John Kerry conceded the morning after the Nov. 2 election.
Counties finished the recount Tuesday. Bush won the state by 118,457 votes over Kerry, according to unofficial results provided to The Associated Press by the 88 counties.
"We've documented in this filing how this recount was not conducted in accordance with uniform standards throughout Ohio" as required by the U.S. Constitution, said John Bonifaz, a lawyer from the National Voting Right Institute representing the candidates.
Ohio law requires an elections board to manually recount a randomly selected 3 percent of ballots. If the totals match certified results for those precincts, all the county's votes are then machine-counted. If the hand count is off, a county must manually recount all its ballots.
The filing, part of an ongoing lawsuit originally brought by a county board of elections to stop the recount, alleges counties did not randomly select precincts for the manual recount and some workers altered votes to prevent a full hand count.
Bonifaz said the filing is based on the experiences of Green Party representatives who observed the recount.
Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, called the contentions "baseless accusations."
"The ballots were counted in Ohio, they were counted again, they were recounted. The election is over," LoParo said.
These people are the Energizer bunnies of politics. They just keep going and going and going...
At this rate they'll be asking for the 30,000th recount in November 2005.
Oh good grief! Get over it already!
It's not fair but, if this is any comfort to you, I know that God sees everything, nobody gets away with anything in this life or the next.Whether political or personal any injustice in this life is answered and I for one believe the Dems are going to have a harder and harder time winning elections in the coming years.Its already happening, I believe!
In the second recount all what they got is 285 votes extra net votes for Kerry falling from hanging chads when they ran the ballots through the machines for a second or third time. President Bush lead in Ohio is still 118,500 votes after the recount was finished.
Anyway the judge will throw out their idiotic request for a second recount.
This election was over on November 3rd and President Bush was re-elected.
IT IS OVER.
Happy New Year.
It is more accurate to call it "Insanely Delusional World".
Happy New Year.
Sometimes I wish CW2 would start...only kidding.
5.56mm
Pray for W and Our Troops
Me too and I'm not kidding. It is obvious that there is no reconciliation possible.
Dems/Libs are usually not too good with numbers. Nor with rational thought, as far as that goes.
This sounds very like someone trying to keep his job, rather than pack up and go home. Maybe this is a make work program for Leftists by Leftists, something to keep the frothing at the maximum effect. Otherwise, it's sounding akin to compulsive-obsessive disorder. Then again, continuing to recount Ohio and expecting a different result could be said to be a variant form of insanity. No way is this reasoned. Or even forward looking, unless that forward lookingness is designed to foment revolt.
Let me repeat that...
Idiots.
I think an army of Republican watchers could volunteer their time in WA state. For old time's sake. Seeing as how so many Washingtomunists came out to peer over Ohioans's shoulders and all, you'd find a whole raft of out-of-staters aching for some payback.
Your right! If the revote happens Im in!How much would it cost me to take a Greyhound from California to Washington anyway?
It worked in Washington State.
We are probably in for a bit of heart burn with this one since the district judge is a Clinton appointee but once it won't hold up when appealed. There is no way that these idiots can clam harm to their elections.
It's sad how these "3rd" party candidates are acting like the useful idiots of the DNC.
Why don't they be honest and re-register as Democrats? Liberals can't even be honest about who they are...
There is no penalty for stealing an election. Rossi won two recounts, on the third, the dims won, voila...a dim Governor.
Keep crunching numbers till you get the numbers you want, that's how they do it.
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