Ohio Ballot Recount?

Statewide Ohio Recount Expected

By Bobby Eberle
Talon News
November 17, 2004

A statewide recount of ballots in Ohio seems likely as two third party candidates announced on Tuesday they have raised the money required for it to begin. The recount effort is requested by Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik and Green Party candidate David Cobb.

Cobb, a write-in candidate in Ohio, said, "I don't expect to win Ohio. But the Green Party has been standing up for democracy and the right for all voters to cast their votes."

Nationally, Cobb received less than 1/10 of 1% of the presidential vote. Badnarik received 14,331 votes in Ohio.

President Bush leads John Kerry in Ohio by 136,483 votes.

"Thanks to the thousands of people who have contributed to this effort, we can say with certainty that there will be a recount in Ohio," Blair Bobier, Media Director for the Cobb-LaMarche campaign, told the Times-Standard.

"The grass-roots support for the recount has been astounding. The donations have come in fast and furiously," Bobier continued.

The Cobb campaign reports that it has received close to $150,000 in donations, mostly from small individual donors.

The state of Ohio requires payment of $10 per precinct or a total of $113,000 to recount the entire state.

According to a spokesman for Ohio's Secretary of State Carlo LoParo, the actual cost to the state of Ohio for recounting the state's ballots will be closer to $1.5 million.

Ohio ballots will not be recounted until December following the official state certification of the first count which is expected in early December. Provisional and absentee ballots are still being counted.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry conceded the election to President Bush on November 3 stating, "[It is] clear that even when all the provisional ballots are counted, which they will be, there won't be enough outstanding votes for us to be able to win Ohio. And therefore we cannot win this election."

Nevertheless, leftist bloggers and Internet forums have continued to spin conspiracy theories of Republican fraud and a stolen election in Ohio.

The theories have been taken from the Internet by a few left-leaning members of the mainstream media such as little known MSNBC host Keith Olbermann who has broadcast them on his evening program, "Countdown With Keith Olbermann".

Some, like a reported 93,000 extra votes for Bush in Ohio, turned out to be nothing more than a computer anomaly where absentee ballots from many precincts were mistakenly attributed to a single precinct.

Olbermann has also reported on precincts in northern Florida where President Bush received more votes than there were registered Republicans without mentioning that those precincts have traditionally voted for Republican presidential candidates for years.

The Electoral College is expected to cast its votes for president on December 13. Congress will open the votes January 6, 2005.

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