Ohio recount will come at a heavy price
Morning Journal Staff and Wire Reports 12/08/2004

 LORAIN Elections boards in Lorain, Erie and Huron counties are bracing for the cost of recounting votes in the presidential race, but they don't expect their tabs will be as high as the $80,000 bill that Hamilton County anticipates.

''We're not expecting our costs to come close to that,'' said Marilyn Jacobcik, director of the Lorain County Board of Elections, adding that the board hasn't discussed total costs of a recount.

Statewide recounts are being requested by Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik and Green Party candidate David Cobb. Badnarik received 14,695 votes, or 0.26 percent of the overall total in the presidential race. Cobb received 186 votes.

''It's quite apparent that the outcome will not change, but the taxpayers will wind up having to pay for it anyway,'' Jacobcik said yesterday.

Deborah McDowell, deputy director of the Erie County Board of Elections, said she can't imagine the cost of the recount being more than a few hundred dollars.

''If we can just do the usual hand recount of three percent of the ballots and use the machines for the rest, I can't imagine it being too expensive,'' McDowell said.

In Huron County, the board of elections hasn't met yet to discuss the costs the recount would set them back, but Kathleen Brady, its director, said they will do the recount the most inexpensive way possible.

''We are going to try and do it all in-house with our current staff so it's as inexpensive as possible,'' Brady said.

Hamilton County received the official recount request yesterday afternoon, elections board director John Williams said.

The county's costs will depend on whether it is forced to hand count its punch card ballots, but the expense will be far beyond the $10 a precinct the recount requesters are being charged, he said. The county has 1,013 precincts.

According to local board of elections officials, Lorain County has 239 precincts, Huron has 55 and Erie has 63.

''The general taxpayers are going to get soaked a little bit, but the law is what it is,'' Williams said.

On Monday, Ohio certified President Bush as the winner with a 118,775-vote lead over Democrat John Kerry. The final vote count was closer than unofficial election night results that showed Bush with a lead of 136,000 votes, but the margin was not close enough to trigger a mandatory recount.

State law sets the cost of the recount requested by the third-party candidates at $10 a precinct or $113,600 for a statewide election. But Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell says a more accurate cost is about $1.5 million.

''Statewide the amount is sizable, but in our case it shows up more subtly,'' Jacobcik said.

Although he doesn't know how much the recount would cost Lorain County, Robert Rousseau, chairman of the Lorain County Republican Party and member of the board of elections, said he felt Lorain County would be one to take the brunt of the recount expense of the state.

''The people who have filed for the recount also are making hundreds of public records requests, and that's going to pull some people off their jobs, and 30 percent of Lorain County has a special election Feb. 8, and then we have the May primary. I would say that this is going to cost us a substantial amount of money, and will be a very time-consuming situation,'' Rousseau said yesterday.

At least one county received the recount request from Cobb and Badnarik yesterday afternoon. Others would receive requests this morning, said John Bonifaz, general counsel for the Boston-based National Voting Rights Institute, which represents the independent candidates.

''We're talking about the paramount right to vote here,'' he said. ''If counties have concerns about the cost built into the statute, they should take up the matter with the Ohio Legislature, but they should not blame the candidates for making sure votes are properly accounted for.''

The recount likely will not begin until next week because of a five-day waiting period to allow candidates time to arrange witnesses to the counting. Cobb, Badnarik and the Kerry-Edwards campaign gave permission for the recount to start before the five-day period. The Bush-Cheney campaign, which has criticized the recount effort, did not waive the waiting period.

The Kerry campaign supports the recount but says it does not expect the election outcome to change