[Mb-civic] Ohio Voters Refile Election Challenge

[Michael Butler]

Also see below:     
Legitimate Ballots Ruled Out in Washington Governors Race    €

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    Ohio Voters Refile Election Challenge
    By Andrew Welsh-Huggins
    The Associated Press

     Friday 17 December 2004

     Columbus, Ohio - Voters who claim problems with Ohio voting machines
Nov. 2 indicated fraud refiled a request with the Ohio Supreme Court on
Friday to overturn the presidential results.

     The 37 voters cite reports of machine errors, double-counting of some
ballots and a shortage of voting machines in predominantly minority
precincts as reasons to throw out the election results.

     The challenge is backed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Cliff Arnebeck, a
Columbus attorney for the Massachusetts-based Alliance for Democracy, who
accused the campaign of President Bush of "high-tech vote stealing."

     The group filed the request Monday, the day the Electoral College cast
votes for Bush. Chief Justice Thomas Moyer of the state Supreme Court threw
out the complaint Thursday, saying the voters improperly included a second
election challenge in the complaint.

     Ohio and its 20 electoral votes were the difference in the presidential
race. On Dec. 6, Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell declared
President Bush the official winner in the state by 119,000 votes over
Democrat John Kerry.

     Elections officials are conducting a recount at the request of
third-party presidential candidates, but neither the Bush nor Kerry
campaigns expect it to change the outcome.

     With 65 of Ohio's 88 counties reporting final recounts to The
Associated Press on Friday, Bush had gained 395 votes and Kerry has gained
554 votes. The running tally accounts for 4.4 million votes cast, or about
74 percent of the total certified vote from the Nov. 2 election.

     Officials said hanging chads that came loose when punch-card ballots
were handled again or rerun through tallying machines account for most of
the additional votes.

   


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    Judge Blocks Washington State Ballot Count
    By Rebecca Cook
    The Associated Press

     Saturday 18 December 2004

     Tacoma, Wash. - A judge Friday granted a state Republican Party request
to block the counting of hundreds of recently discovered King County ballots
in the governor's race, which the GOP's candidate is winning by just a few
dozen votes.

     Even if the election workers wrongly rejected the ballots - 150 of
which were discovered Friday - it is too late for King County to reconsider
them now, Pierce County Superior Court Judge Stephanie Arend said.

     The issue of the ballots could prove pivotal: With all but King County
finished with a hand recount, Republican Dino Rossi was leading Democrat
Christine Gregoire by 50 votes.

     From reading state law and state Supreme Court decisions, "it is clear
to me that it is not appropriate to go back and revisit decisions on whether
ballots should or should not be counted," Arend said.

     Democrats appealed to the state Supreme Court, and King County
Elections Director Dean Logan said the county also planned to appeal.

     "These are legitimate voters who cast legitimate ballots," he said.
"It's just a travesty if we do not include these ballots."

     Rossi spokeswoman Mary Lane said the judge made the right decision.

     "If King County were allowed to keep adding more ballots, elections
would never end," Lane said.

     As for those whose ballots aren't counted, she said: "That is King
County's fault. We cannot be held responsible for the fact that King County
made a mistake."

     State Supreme Court Chief Justice Gerry Alexander said the high court
is prepared to take up the case next week.

     Rossi won the Nov. 2 election over Gregoire by 261 votes in the first
count and by 42 after a machine recount of the 2.9 million votes cast.

     Additional votes have been tallied in a hand recount sought by
Democrats. By Friday night, Rossi had gained eight votes in the hand recount
for an overall lead of 50, with every county reporting except King, a
Democratic stronghold.

     King County officials and Democrats want to include 723 newfound
ballots in the hand recount, saying they are valid ballots that were
mistakenly rejected because of county workers' errors.

     "From the beginning, this has been about fixing mistakes and counting
every legitimate ballot," Gregoire said in a statement Friday. "The people
of Washington deserve an accurate count."

     Republicans sued, saying it was too late to add ballots to the recount
now.

     Arend granted the GOP a temporary restraining order to stop elections
workers from taking the newly discovered ballots out of their outer
envelopes, which bear the voter's signature. County elections officials had
said ballots would not be separated from their security envelopes until the
lawsuit was decided.

     Jack Oxford is one of the voters whose ballots Arend said should not be
counted.

     "She said, 'Jack, your vote doesn't count,'" said Oxford, 50, an
electrical field supervisor from Enumclaw. "I'm very upset, very
distressed."

     Early this week, county workers found 573 ballots that elections
officials say were mistakenly rejected because there was a problem with how
the voters' signatures had been scanned into the county's computer system.
County workers should have checked for a paper signature to verify the
ballot during the original count, but instead they were put in the reject
pile.

     Workers found another 150 ballots Friday after officials noticed that
none of the 573 ballot envelopes contained names beginning with the letters
A or B, and only two started with C.

     The plastic trays containing ballots from voters with last names
beginning with A, B and C were apparently overlooked because they were under
other trays, said Bill Huennekens, King County elections superintendent.

     "It is a serious mistake we made, but we are going to do the right
thing for the citizens of King County," Huennekens said. "We've conducted
this election in an open and transparent manner. We're not trying to hide
anything."

     State GOP spokesman Chris Vance called those ballots "very suspicious."

     The King County Canvassing Board has yet to decide the fate of 22 other
uncounted ballots, found this week in the side bins of plastic base units in
which polling machines sit.

  

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