[Vision2020] Third-Party Candidates Seek Second Ohio Recount

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (December 31, 2004) Spokesman review.

 

Both the Green Party and Libertarian Party are seeking a recount in Ohio.

 

Note to Dale "Doug's Boy" Courtney:  Being a Libertarian, as you claim, I
suggest that you stand behind your party and openly support their demand for
this recount, ok?

 

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Third-party candidates seek second Ohio recount 

 

Green Party, Libertarian say they want all votes counted

Jay Cohen

Associated Press

December 31, 2004

 

 

COLUMBUS, Ohio - 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
properly 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.

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