Nader-sought recount to proceed

By KEVIN LANDRIGAN, Nashua Telegraph Staff
Published: Friday, Nov. 19, 2004
CONCORD - The recount of presidential ballots in Litchfield and two Manchester wards Thursday night differed by only 15 votes from more than 12,000 ballots cast.

Aides to independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader said that despite this similarity, they want to proceed with last week?s request to count ballots from six other communities.

Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese said those reviewed Thursday were not representative enough to suspend the recount. Zeese conceded this would likely prove voting-machine tampering favoring President George W. Bush did not take place.

?This just shows Democrats have more soul-searching to do for why they lost the election. They can?t use machine troubles as an excuse,? Zeese said.

In his original request, Nader noted that ?irregularities? in the optical scanning voting machines appeared to have inflated the totals that Bush should have received in several key states.

Democrat John Kerry won New Hampshire by 1.3 percent while some exit polls during Nov. 2 had him in front by double digits. Nader got only seven-tenths of 1 percent.

Zeese said Nader has not requested any other recount, but questions still remain about voting machine problems in Ohio, New Mexico, Florida and North Carolina.

The Libertarian and Green parties have filed to do a statewide recount of Ohio, where Kerry lost by roughly 136,000 votes.

What added intrigue to this recount Thursday night was that although presidential results changed by only four votes in Manchester Ward 6, Republican state Sen. Andre Martel picked up 105 more votes there while Democratic challenger David Gelinas added seven.

Secretary of State Bill Gardner also said state officials could not locate a recount tally sheet Thursday to verify ballots that had been counted by volunteers for an additional Manchester precinct - Ward 9.

The Senate recount will resume Wednesday. The presidential recount will take more than one day to complete and may wait until after Thanksgiving weekend.

Supporters of Nader, Bush and Kerry said the recount reinforced the integrity of the voting method in 85 percent of New Hampshire precincts, which use electronically read ballots but retain a paper ballot trail to check them for accuracy.

?Every state should have what New Hampshire has, which is a paper ballot backup and access to either an easy recount like this one or a routine audit after every election,? Zeese said.

The other 15 percent of towns and cities in the state use paper ballots.

Ida Briggs is a Waterford, Mich., software company owner who helped convince Nader to seek and pay for the New Hampshire recount after she read returns did not match up with exit polls from several swing states, including New Hampshire.

Her research found that among 300 precincts, Kerry did worse in only 71 of them Nov. 2 than former Vice President Al Gore did in 2000. The out-of-trend areas were much more prevalent in larger districts, where at least 5,000 votes were cast, she said.