Better known to football fans as a false start, or offsides…
There are several stories floating around today about recounts in Ohio, but those who don the tin sheened helmet ought to cast their gaze back toward last week.
When last we left tiny New Hampshire, professional fringe candidate Ralph Nader had requested a recount of some New Hampshire towns. Why? Because someone on the internet crunched the numbers to show the the evil optical scan ballots favored George Bush by more that the exit polls and 2000 results would suggest.
So how’s that recount going? The Concord Monitor reports:
Nader, an independent presidential candidate this year, paid $2,000 to begin a recount of 11 of the state’s 126 precincts after an analysis showed wide differences in voting trends between the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.
The analysis, performed by Michigan programmer Ida Briggs, said Sen. John Kerry’s votes were much worse in some locations than former vice president Al Gore’s in 2000, even though Kerry carried the state and Gore didn’t.
Election officials hoped to finish recounts in five of Nader’s 11 precincts yesterday, but only finished two by 4 p.m. and some partial returns by 8 p.m., Gardner said. Those areas, Litchfield and Manchester’s Ward 7, showed little change from the official tallies.
Briggs said Gore lost Litchfield by 8 percentage points, but Kerry lost by 15. Gore won the Manchester ward by 8 points, but the candidates were even this year, she added.
She called the results strange, but she acknowledged the early recount results showed the changes from 2000 may reflect the actual vote accurately.
“What we’re seeing is just oddness in New Hampshire,” she said. “That may just be the way it is.”None of this is likely to slow the drumbeat for recount in Ohio, which it is estimated will cost Ohio taxpayers nearly $1.4 million dollars, on top of the $113,600 paid by Libertarian Michael Badnarik and the Green Party’s David Cobb.
Of course there’s also the minor detail that Ohio is not finished counting every provisional vote, as John Edwards has implored them to do. As the local election official said, “There’s no final count. There’s no number from which to begin a recount.”
This is a national DISGRACE!! What does it take for these losers to accept that they lost?
Your are right, it is a disgrace. We knew this was coming, the liberals already said they were going to claim voter intimidation even where none exists. They are simply living down to their promises. I say let them count. The country is watching and the liberals are proving themselves to be the self serving wackos we all knew them to be. The more people we let them do it in front of the better.
I don’t see why people are so surprised some places voted differently than they did in 2000. Most of the country isn’t a hard-line Democrat or Republican. This shouldn’t shock anyone.
The Ohio recount is only going to do one thing: Screw over Ohio tax payers.
Last year a group of “sore loser” Republicans forced a recall of a fairly and democratically elected Governor and cost the California taxpayers over $77 Million.
So now people complain about a paltry $1M to recount Ohio, where there have been hundreds of documented cases of voter suppression? Ohio and Ken Blackwell deserve this 100%.
You people are pretty premature and a little ignorant… I think even a little scared. What’s the difference with this election, since Republicans have cost multi-many times more than this go around for their BS? Yes. Let them recount. It shows the numbers much more accurately. That’s where this election differs from the last. Bush and his supporters shouldn’t whine if someone else is pressing the recount this time. Who was whining for one last time? Bush, AND his supporters. I’m damn sure you people did. I don’t support either side, but I do support a change from what I’ve seen the last four years. And just a freshener, the economy was screwed up not even eight weeks after Bush got into office. Way before 9/11. And no, it wasn’t bad before he bought his way into office with the judiciary system (which is supposed to keep its nose out of legislative and executive affairs and elections). I’m out.
Jake, you’re a moron. Bush won Florida, why would he want a recount?