Ohio: Official Recount Now Expected

David Cobb, the 2004 presidential candidate for the Green Party, said today: "We announce our intention to seek a recount of the vote in Ohio. Since the required fee for a statewide recount is $113,600, the only question was whether that money could be raised in time to meet the filing deadline. That question has been answered. 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."

The Green Party is working with the Libertarian Party -- both parties were on the ballot in Ohio -- in securing a recount. The presidential candidates for the two parties have demanded that Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who co-chaired this year's Bush campaign in Ohio, recuse himself from the recount process.

The media director for the Cobb-LaMarche campaign, Blair Bobier, said today: "The Ohio presidential election was marred by numerous press and independent reports of mis-marked and discarded ballots, problems with electronic voting machines and the targeted disenfranchisement of African-American voters. A number of citizens' groups and voting rights organizations are holding the second of two hearings today in Columbus, Ohio, to take testimony from voters, poll watchers and election experts about problems with the Ohio vote. The hearing, from 6 to 9 p.m., will be held at the Courthouse, meeting room A, 373 S. High St., in Columbus." For more information, see: .

JOHN BONIFAZ, JBonifaz@nvri.org, http://www.nvri.org
Executive director for the National Voting Rights Institute, Bonifaz is the lawyer for the recount effort. He said today: "We must ensure that all votes are properly counted."

JONATHAN TURLEY, jturley@law.gwu.edu, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6452480
Turley is a professor of constitutional law at George Washington University; he is not connected to the recount efforts. Turley said today: "Electors are certified on Dec. 7. They actually vote on Dec. 13. But those votes are not opened by Congress until Jan. 6. So there is still time to challenge the results in Ohio -- as well as other close states such as New Mexico, Iowa and Nevada."

Turley added: "I was surprised on the morning after the election. I was legal analyst with CBS News for the election and we did not go off the air until 6 a.m. At that time, due to the reports and my conversation with Kerry attorneys, I expected a challenge. Kerry's statement the day after the election that there were not enough provisional ballots to have any chance to alter the result of the election may have been true, but it was a bit misleading since provisional ballots are only part of the story. There were also absentee ballots, there were reports of substantial pockets of election problems, and allegations of over-voting and machine malfunction. In addition, over 70 percent of Ohio's votes were done with punch cards. We know that when you do a challenge to those, they tend to turn over. So there is room to challenge Ohio and other states. This is not to say that a recount is likely to change the result of the election, but it is not an impossibility."

Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org
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1 p.m. ET -- Monday, November 15, 2004
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167