Ballot after ballot examined in hushed room as campaigns watch

JOHN NOLAN

Associated Press   15 December 2004

CINCINNATI - Two teams of Republican and Democratic election workers talked in whispers and held punch-card ballots up to lights Wednesday as they recounted thousands of ballots and tried to divine voters' intent when they found a few with hanging chads.

Observers for the presidential campaigns of Democrat John Kerry, President Bush and Green Party candidate David Cobb kept watch over the recount from chairs a few feet away, standing closer when chads were scrutinized.

The scene was being repeated statewide this week in a recount in the state that gave Bush the election last month.

At least 35 of Ohio's 88 counties had completed their recounts or were starting Wednesday, according to a survey by The Associated Press. Some of the tallies will not be complete until next week.

"It takes a lot of work, a lot of hours," said Kerry campaign observer Jeannette Harrison, 63, a real estate agent. "This is a job that has to be done."

The recount, requested by Cobb and Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik, is supported by the Kerry campaign though it has acknowledged there are not enough votes to change the outcome.

The Hamilton County workers' concentrating grimaces and up-close examinations of ballot holes were reminiscent of images from five weeks of recounts in Florida after the 2000 presidential election, when the terms pregnant chad and butterfly ballot were made famous.

Boxes of ballots were stacked in front of the Hamilton County election workers in a carpeted room whose only furniture was the tables and chairs.

Workers wrote results on tally sheets as they counted ballots from 30 precincts randomly ed from the county's 1,013 - a total of about 13,000 of 433,000 ballots cast in November in the county that includes the Cincinnati metropolitan area.

Under Ohio law, workers must hand-count 3 percent of ballots. If the results match the certified results exactly, all other ballots can be recounted by machine. If the totals are off, all ballots must be counted by hand, adding days or weeks to the process.

Harrison, an Ohio Democratic Party executive committee member, said she is sharing details of what she sees with state party officials in hopes of improving future elections in Ohio, Bush beat Kerry by 119,000 votes.

Harrison has been watching since Hamilton County's recount began Monday. Officials hoped to conclude Thursday, unless a full manual recount is needed.

In a separate action, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and attorney Cliff Arnebeck of the Massachusetts-based Alliance for Democracy are backing a request on behalf of 40 Ohio voters asking the state Supreme Court reconsider the election results, accusing Bush's campaign of "high-tech vote stealing."

Jackson said activists challenging the election outcome noticed Bush generally received more votes in counties that use optical-scan voting machines and questioned whether the machines were calibrated to record votes for Bush.

The challengers also claim there were disparities in vote totals for Democrats, too few voting machines in Democrat-leaning precincts, organized campaigns directing voters to the wrong polling place and confusion over the counting of provisional ballots by voters whose names did not appear in the records at polling places.

If the court decides to hear the challenge, it can declare a new winner or throw out the results. However, Ohio's electors cast the state's 20 electoral votes for Bush on Monday.

About 92,000 ballots cast in last month's presidential election failed to record a vote for president, most on punch-card systems.

A lawyer representing Kerry has asked that representatives of the campaign be allowed to inspect those ballots as part of a recount being done in Ohio.

In Hamilton County, officials agreed to allow observers to review a list of rejected provisional ballots. Ohio threw out any provisionals not cast in the precinct where the voter lived.

Green party observer Denise McCoskey, 36, a Miami University classics instructor, said she is concerned some provisional ballots were rejected in cases where voters went to polling place for multiple precincts and cast ballots at the wrong precinct within that polling location.

County election officials have been open in allowing all phases of the recount to be watched, she said.

"I honestly do not expect the results to be overturned," she said.

The Cobb and Badnarik campaigns paid $113,600 for the recount, at the state-mandated rate of $10 per precinct. County election officials say the recount will cost them far more.