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.
Why should candidates who have absolutely no chance of winning the election have standing to request a recount. The Green and Libertarian candidates combined only got 26,600 votes which is about a fifth of the difference between Bush and Kerry in Ohio. I think only the parties who have an actual shot at winning the recount should have standing to file a suit to request a recount.
There's plenty of boldness going around here in WA. I'm here, and I'm hip-deep in it.
I don't know what Rossi's next steps are going to be. To move from where we are we need a foothold in the law. That's the difference between us and them.
Yes, they have (possibly, but not yet proven, stay tuned) done illegal things in their zeal to steal this election. But we will not go outside the law ourselves. If there is anything that can be lawfully done, it will be done. You can take *that* to the bank.
Whatever these guys are smoking, I don't want any.
As long as they keep counting they can also ''find ''a box of ''uncounted'' ballots in the dead of night in an abandoned warehouse and add them to the count to get Lurch over the top! Doesnt matter if the ballots are all registered to ''homeless'' people that don't really exist and use the courthouse as their address, doesnt matter at all!
Court: "Gentlemen - I have heard and considered your arguments. Motion denied. Now go screw yourselves."
Whiny libs trying to manipulate our legal system to rob us of a political election? How unheard of!
Won't happen, the most they could possibly hope to get away with would be coming up with a few hundred, or, at most a few thousand "undiscovered" ballots. And if that did happen, each county board of elections would have to get at least one republican member to agree that it is a valid vote for Kerry for it to be added to his total. There was an article here a few weeks ago about how the dems in one county (can't remember which) wanted 459 invalid provisional ballots to be counted, but they couldn't get one republican board member to agree, so they were not counted, as they shouldn't be.
Please try to word your next post a little stronger. I am not sure I get the dirft of your message here...
Dennis Kucinich is awfully quiet.
He must be quaking in his boots that his district will be scrutinized.
He has some very, very unusual numbers.
I noticed his returns didn't even come in until almost midnight.
What makes me so angry is these stupid idiots wants recount after recount when the difference in votes is 100,000 something votes, that Bush leads with! Rossi wants a revote in an election he won two times already where they ''claim'' this RAT women Gregoire is now the''UNDISPUTED'' winner, with only 100 something votes[that arent real votes anyway] and any request for a revote is outragious and disgusting!How dare he ask for this, and not concede immediatlely. Do they hear themselves?!!!
I wonder if they really think any federal judge who has hopes of future advancement would really want to step into this a week before Congress ratifies the electors?
Exactly. The OH State Legislature needs to tighten the recount laws to restrict recount requests to putative winners. Besides, the Greens and Libertarians have no legal standing to request a recount in the first place. Kerry already CONCEDED. What more do they want?
Exactly. Republicans can't overturn an election where the Democratic winner (in WA State) takes office under disputed circumstances but Democrats are entitled to challenge an election in which the President's margin of victory in OH is indisputable. Tell me what's fair about that.
Whats the use of bothering to ask for another recount wont we just rig that one too?..............Its funny you should say that cause when I saw Rossi on tv today asking for a revote I thought to myself what's the use? With these RATS controlling everything in Washington state won't they just have another fraudelent elections even with the revote if he gets it and tip the votes to Gregoire again? I hate to think that way ,its so pessimistic but sorry thats how I feel!
You're right - and why aren't the Greens and Libertarians filing suit on behalf of Dino Rossi? Someone had to ask the $64,000 proverbial question. I mean, what's the interest of two minor party candidates in being shills on behalf of the Democrats?
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