Greens and Libertarians Team Up to Demand Recount

cyberformer writes "The Ohio election rules state that any losing candidate can demand a manual recount. Today, David Cobb and Michael Badnarik, the predidential candidates for the Green and Libertarian parties, announced that they are joining forces to do just that. A manual recount is important because it will include every ballot cast, whereas the first count only includes ballots that can be read by machine. It could even tip the state (and thus the election) from Bush to Kerry."

Comments

Re:What if Kerry won?

[phoenix.bam!]

No one is ever forced to concede. the only reason a person makes a speech is for show. the speech itself has no legal force. If kerry does indeed win Ohio then Bush would lose those electoral votes, lose the election and be on his way back to texas in Jan '05. Even with the recount though, Kerry winning is a longshot, no need to get the hopes up.

Re:What if Kerry won?

[whoda]

The electoral college doesn't meet to vote until December 13th this year.
It's not officially over until they have voted. The results of that vote aren't unsealed and counted until January 6th.

Conceding elections is just a nice way of saying, I won't personally oppose you any more.

If the outcome changes thru some other process and the electoral college votes Kerry into the Presidency, that's it, Bush wouldn't have to concede anything.

WHERE YOU CAN DONATE

[cgenman]

Here. And please do, it's worth every penny, even if just to confirm the ability / inability of the machines.

Re:Nader is also asking for a recount

[jemfinch]

Funny, since Nader wasn't even on the ballot in Ohio because the signatures he (or rather, his paid "volunteers") collected for his petition to be placed on the ballot didn't hold under scrutiny, and were rejected by the Ohio Supreme Court.

Jeremy

Re:Good reason for a recount

[FleaPlus]

Here's what Michael Badnarik himself posted in response to some comments in his blog:

I find the percentage of negative comments here somewhat surprising given the number of "please ask for a recount" messages that I've alread gotten. However, I'd like to clear up a serious misconception that many of you apparently have.

This demand for a recount is not expected to change the outcome. I may be "Quixotic", but I'm not crazy. David Cobb and I have no expectation that the results of the election will be changed in the slightest. What we ARE hoping to do is to find out just how corrupt the system really is. Why bother voting for anyone if the electronic machines are going to report a pre-determined outcome.

I saw a bumper sticker that expressed the idea very well. It said: DIEBOLD - MAKING MACHINES THAT VOTE SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO.

Comment by Michael Badnarik -- 11/11/2004 @ 6:23 pm

Re:Makes no difference

[mwlewis]

But, you know who the person with the second largest number of ballots cast for him is? Kerry. That means that Bush had the largest number of votes cast *against* him in any presidential election in US history.

Ummm, no, that's wrong. First, since Bush had more votes than Kerry, Kerry had more votes cast against him than were cast against Bush. But let's assume that you meant to say that Bush had the most votes cast against him and still won the election. You'd still be wrong. In 1992, there were almost 60 million votes against Bill Clinton, compared to almost 57 million against Bush in 2004.