Free Republic

Bush Has Solid Lead in N.M. After Canvass Wednesday November 17, 2004 11:01 PM LAS CRUCES, N.M. (AP) - President Bush has kept his lead in New Mexico after the last county in the state to certify votes from the election completed its canvass Tuesday. Democrat John Kerry picked up 206 votes in Dona Ana County, New Mexico's second largest, while Bush garnered an additional 100, giving him a 6,047-vote lead statewide in an unofficial Associated Press tally. Results from the official count will be released next week. In 2000, Al Gore beat Bush in New Mexico by 366 votes....

New Mexico is going through what seems to have become its traditional post-election vote-counting dilemma, with confusion and rhetoric in great supply. One feeds the other and it's not good for the integrity of the process. This year brought a new wrinkle with thousands of provisional paper ballots on top of a bumper crop of absentee and so-called in-lieu-of-ballots. More than 19,000 of these ballots remain to be verified or counted, or both. It's anyone's guess how many will be disallowed if the voter's eligibility cannot be confirmed. The number of outstanding ballots -- and potential votes -- is greater...

Go to www.franklincountyohio.gov. Go to the election results. One district (Gahanna 1-B) shows Bush getting more votes than total votes cast in every other race. Each race is showing approx. 600 votes. Bush alone got more than 4000.

The Franklin County Board of elections has posted a PDF file showing the precinct totals in the county. One of the precincts is clearly in error, Gahanna 1B, which lists Bush with 4258 votes, to Kerry's 260. No precinct has that many voters, and in fact the "public precinct count" for that precinct (number of voters who entered a voting booth) is listed as only 638. So Bush was given about 4000 spurious votes in that precinct. I sent an email to the news editor of the Columbus Dispatch and got a reply saying that the Dispatch staff noticed the...

Bush's lead down to 1,003 votes. http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/NM/P/00/index.html

ABC reporter just said that there are 6000 absentee ballots in 1 county but the election workers have gone home for the night, so no results until the morning. Also 16,000 provisional ballots. Current statewide count is a 4,000 vote Bush lead.

WASHINGTON — Florida again. And Ohio and Iowa and New Mexico and maybe Wisconsin or one or two other battleground states. All are possible settings for a replay of the court contests and recounts that marked the 2000 election. The neck-and-neck presidential election could end, as it almost always has through American history, with a clear winner and a gracious loser on Election Night. But armies of lawyers are ready for the alternative with an eye to fighting several Florida-style postelection legal wars at once. Lawyers set up command posts in key states weeks ago, and they have already filed...