Kerry Joins Cobb's Request to Preserve Evidence in Ohio Recount

Common Dreams   Press Release   28 December 2004
  

OHIO - December 28 - The Motion filed by Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb last week, asking a Federal Court to preserve a wide range of evidence to ensure the integrity of the Ohio recount, was officially supported by the Kerry-Edwards campaign today.

"Senator Kerry filed a Motion today which essentially says nothing more than 'me, too' to our filing from last week," said Blair Bobier, Media Director for the Cobb-LaMarche campaign.

Cobb's attorneys on Thursday had filed a Motion for a Preservation Order and for Leave to Take Limited Expedited Discovery in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio where recount litigation is pending. The Motion, filed on behalf of Cobb, Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik and the National Voting Rights Institute, requested that voting machines and election records be preserved.

"We welcome Senator Kerry's belated interest in ensuring the integrity of the Ohio recount. This effort, initiated by the Green and Libertarian presidential candidates, has been focusing on the integrity of the election process and not on the outcome. In order to trust the election results, we have to trust the process. All presidential candidates, including George W. Bush, who are committed to an open and accountable voting system should demand an investigation into an election clouded by serious allegations of fraud and suppression," said Bobier.

The Ohio recount has been plagued with almost as many problems as the underlying presidential election. One of the more notable instances took place on December 10, in Hocking County, Ohio, when a representative from Triad Governmental Systems, Inc. reprogrammed a computer used for tabulating votes and instructed the county's Deputy Director of Elections to create a "cheat sheet" so "the count would come out perfect and we wouldn't have to do a full hand recount of the county." Triad later reported working on voting machines in a number of other counties prior to the initiation of the recount.

The Hocking County incident was first revealed to the public by David Cobb during his testimony before the Congressional Forum chaired by Representative John Conyers in Columbus, Ohio on December 13.

Legal documents filed in the Ohio recount litigation, along with detailed reports from official recount observers detailing the error-ridden recount, can be found on the Cobb-LaMarche website, http://www.votecobb.org. Information about the Green Party can be found at http://www.gp.org.