The Final Chapter in Cobb-Badnarik 2004 Recount Requests

After the November 2004 election, the presidential nominees of the Green Party and the Libertarian Party jointly requested a recount of the presidential vote in New Mexico and in Ohio.

Both states had relatively nominal fees for requesting a recount. But elections officials in both states were determined to thwart the requests. In New Mexico, the state retroactively increased the fee ten-fold and a lower court said that was OK. The two candidates couldn’t afford the $1,400,000 new fee for the recount, so they dropped their request, and the voting-counting machines were then reprogrammed so that any recount would be impossible. Later, on May 16, 2006, the New Mexico Supreme Court said the two candidates should have received the recount they had requested after all, but, of course, by then it was too late.

In Ohio, the recount supposedly went ahead. Under the law, a few precincts were supposedly to be randomly chosen. A hand count of these randomly-chosen precincts was then to be compared with the machine total. If they matched, no further recount in that county was needed. On January 24, a jury convicted two Ohio elections officials of rigging the recount. Instead of randomly choosing precincts, they first identified a few precincts in which the hand-count and the machine-count matched. Then they claimed that those precincts had been the randomly-chosen ones; and since totals matched, no further recount of other precincts was needed. As in New Mexico, it is too late to do anything about it.


Comments

The Final Chapter in Cobb-Badnarik 2004 Recount Requests — No Comments

  1. So then “recounts” aren’t really recounts afterall? Have the reassurances that “recounts” will be easier and faster using electronic voting equipment simply been ‘distortions’ to convince the electorate of their adoption? These Ohio and New Mexico examples aren’t evidence to the contrary.

    -it isn’t who votes that counts, but who counts the votes.

  2. It sounds more like destroying evidence to me . E lection machines should not be touched untill all recounts and court judgements have concluded !

  3. Hand counted paper ballots, tabulated in a public place. Ending vote fraud is probably impossible, but let’s make it as difficult as we can!

  4. Range Voting will no more allow the alternative parties to flourish than IRV. The problem is single member districts elected by non-majorities and the fact that candidates can only get their message out to many voters if they have a large amount of money.

    Likely the introduction of either method would allow alternative parties get a higher percentage of the vote and use their successes to advocate for proportional representation.

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