Kerry Keeps His Promise...
 

Kerry lawyers scrutinize voting in Ohio
But campaign says effort isn't aimed at challenging results

The Associated Press
Updated: 11:37 a.m. ET Nov. 11, 2004

CLEVELAND - Lawyers from John Kerry’s presidential campaign are scrutinizing the results of voting in Ohio, but the campaign said the effort is not aimed at changing the outcome of the election.

"While the outcome of the election is not in doubt, no one cares more about voting irregularities than John Kerry and John Edwards,” Kerry campaign spokesman David Wade said in describing what he called a “fact-finding mission” in Ohio. “They remain committed to their pledge that every vote be counted, that's why they built an unprecedented 17,000 lawyer voter protection team to ensure that every American's rights are protected."

Officials in Ohio’s 88 counties are still checking 155,337 provisional ballots to ensure they are valid, and then counting them in a process that is expected to take another week or more. The hotly contested state’s 20 electoral votes gave President Bush the cushion he needed to win re-election.

Bush leads by 136,000 votes
With Bush leading the Democratic presidential nominee Kerry by more than 136,000 votes in the pivotal state in unofficial returns, it would be practically impossible for provisional ballots to change the outcome.

But Kerry’s lawyers say they want to identify any voting problems and put to rest any doubts about the legitimacy of the Ohio vote. To do that they’ll ask election officials about the number of absentee and provisional ballots and if there were any reports of equipment malfunctions.

For the first time this year all states were required to use provisional ballots when voters said they were properly registered but their names weren’t on the rolls.

Judging from past elections, most provisional ballots will be valid, and the total will more or less reflect the overall vote.

Elections employees are using the names on envelopes containing the provisional ballots to determine whether people meet registration requirements, and whether they voted in the correct precinct.

Valid ballots are eventually added to each county’s vote count report, which must be approved by Democrat and Republican board members. Any disputed provisional ballots will be voted on by the members. Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell will break any ties.

‘A time-consuming process’
“This is a time-consuming process, just making sure that every ballot is accounted for,” said Michael Vu, director of the bustling Cuyahoga County elections board in Cleveland.

The state gives boards until Dec. 1 to count and certify every vote. The state has set up a toll-free number for voters to find out if their ballot was counted and if not, why.

Most counties contacted Wednesday by the Associated Press said they were not keeping running totals of how many provisional ballots were valid, but a few that had done partial tallies said most votes appeared to be legitimate.

In 2000, about 107,000 of the 123,518 provisional ballots were deemed valid, or about 87 percent. If that percentage holds for the 2004 election, Kerry wouldn’t win even if every single provisional ballot were somehow cast for him.

Spokesman Dan Trevas said the Ohio Democratic Party will monitor the process but so far hasn’t heard of any major problems. He would not say if he believes the provisional vote count could change the election’s outcome.

“We expect everybody to see the entire process as it goes on,” he said.

GOP wants to put ‘wild ideas to rest’
Jason Mauk, an Ohio GOP spokesman, said both sides want all legitimate votes to count. As for theories about how Kerry could pull out a win, Mauk said, people need to “let the process work so we can put those wild ideas to rest.”

Despite the stakes, Ohio elections workers aren’t under the microscope the way Florida’s were after the contested 2000 presidential election.

Still, voters “want to know if their vote counted. If not, they want to know why, and we’re giving them that this election,” said Debbie Ford, a Franklin County voter services supervisor.

© 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6460869/

It's good to look at things closely to make sure things didn't go wrong, especially since so much was going on about the touchscreen machines. But why focus on Ohio (other than because it ended up being a battle state)? It's just as likely machines may have screwed up in Texas or Vermont or anywhere and those votes (should) count as much as Ohio's votes.

Part of me wants to think the Kerry Campaign had hired all these lawyers in anticipation of some big legal battle and since there isn't one, they either need to put them to good use and make them earn what money they've been paid, instead of just releasing them or there's a contract involved and the lawyers can't leave Kerry Campaign's employment just yet so they might as well use them for something.

And how come the Bush Campaign people don't seem as interested in making sure all the votes were counted (aside from the uncontested victory)?

Because the system clearly favors them. Why would they mess with it?

Ah yes...kinda like a regulator in a car. If it's broken, you can go much faster than you're supposed to be able to, but if that's what you want, why get it fixed?

I don't think it clearly favors either party. The Republicans have just as many things they could investigate and they probably are investigating some of them. Just because there's not a link to it on the Cellar doesn't mean its not happening.

I didn't mean it like that. I meant that they won. Why would they question a process that gave them a victory? To them, it worked. Don't change a thing.

Plus, they actively caused a lot of the problems.

And they want to control the vote reporting when they run Jeb in '08. :eyebrow: