Final count in Ohio gives Kerry 18,000 more votes
Friday, December 03, 2004
Diane Suchetka and Diane Solov
Cleveland Plain Dealer Reporters

George Bush's nail-biting win in Ohio - the one that forced America to wait overnight to learn who its new president would be - was even closer than Election Day results indicated.

John Kerry will pick up about 18,000 votes when Secretary of State Ken Blackwell certifies final results on Monday, according to county-by-county totals gathered by The Plain Dealer. 
 Counties were required to certify their final counts of the votes by Wednesday.

They must submit those counts to the secretary of state by today. The Plain Dealer gathered final numbers from individual counties Thursday.

Those final totals from the 88 counties show the gap between Kerry and Bush narrowing from 136,483 to 118,443 votes.

The change results largely from provisional ballots - special ballots cast by voters who believe they are regis- tered but don't appear on voter rolls.

Those ballots are counted later, after the voter's registration is verified and workers confirm that he or she did not vote elsewhere.

The new totals mean Bush beat Kerry 2,858,687 to 2,740,244 - a margin of slightly more than 2 percent and far greater than the 0.5 percent margin needed to trigger an automatic recount.

But it does, some say, help re-energize legal efforts under way, including a push for a recount in the state that gave Bush the electoral votes he needed to win the presidency.

And the shrinking gap between Bush's and Kerry's vote tallies may also turn up the volume of groups that have pledged to scrutinize alleged voting irregularities.

On Thursday, a group of Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee led by Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan wrote to Blackwell, asking him to respond to specific allegations of counting problems, spoiled ballots, provisional ballots and unusual results. In Cuyahoga County, the letter highlights a pattern in 10 Cleveland precincts where third-party candidates won hundreds of votes, an outcome the judiciary committee members deemed unlikely.

"Collectively, we are concerned that these complaints constitute a troubled portrait of a one-two punch that may well have altered and suppressed votes, particularly minority and Democratic votes," the letter said in part.

Last week, The People for the American Way Foundation sued Blackwell and the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in the hopes that more provisional ballots will be counted.

That lawsuit has nothing to do with final election results, said Elliot Mincberg, the foundation's legal director. The objective, he said, is to count every valid vote.

"If the margin is shrinking, it in some ways makes it potentially more important," Mincberg said. "The key point is, if someone was a properly registered voter and they cast a vote, that vote ought to count."

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, whose Rainbow/PUSH Coalition is contemplating a lawsuit in the Ohio Supreme Court over alleged voting irregularities, also said the smaller margin raises the concern about disenfranchisement.

"We're only speculating now as to what other factors contributed to the vote totals," said Jackson, who called for an independent probe of voting machines.

"I have no problem with the winner winning and the loser losing. My issue is with the disenfranchisement issue."

Republicans and Democrats, though, say the new numbers are of little significance.

"It shows that the election in Ohio is even closer than the unofficial results indicated," said Don McTigue, an attorney specializing in election law for the Democrats.

"But it's still beyond the margin of error, way beyond the margin of error," Bob Bennett, chairman of Ohio's Republican Party, said of Bush's lead.

"If anybody wants to call for a recount, bring 'em on. If they want the Democrats to lose again and again and again, we'll have a recount.

"But I think it's waste of taxpayer money."

Blackwell's office estimates that a recount will cost the state about $1.5 million.

The most significant change came in Sandusky County, west of Cleveland, where both candidates actually lost votes between Election Day and the official count. That's because the official count corrected an earlier error in which votes from 10 precincts were tallied twice.

The candidates also lost votes in Harrison County, which also acknowledged a counting glitch in its early results.

The slimmer margin may also draw attention to recount efforts in Ohio.

Earlier this week, the Kerry campaign added its support to a legal request for a statewide recount initiated by the Green and Libertarian parties.

"Now that they're part of the federal litigation and the gap narrows, I think it makes it more interesting," said Blair Bobier, spokesman for Green Party candidate David Cobb.

Bobier said the Green and Libertarian parties filed papers in federal court Thursday accusing Blackwell of abusing his discretionary authority by stalling the Ohio recount. They asked the court to order the recount to begin immediately and be completed before presidential electors vote Dec. 13.

They also want to halt Blackwell from finalizing the election results and to block certification of electors until the recount is finished.