The Mother of All Election Recounts? - Mother Jones

[flamingdem]

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/obama-romney-election-recount

With the 2012 presidential race Xanax-poppingly close, political observers have been musing on various nightmarish outcomes, including a recount scenario like Florida's in 2000, when hanging chads and butterfly ballots ultimately gave way to a George W. Bush presidency delivered by the Supreme Court. So what are the Obama and Romney campaigns prepared to do in the event of another razor-thin result subject to dispute, perhaps this time in Ohio?

Both political parties have been ramping up their legal teams over the past 12 years. In an interview with the Daily Beast in July, former Obama Chief of Staff William Daley, who chaired Al Gore's 2000 campaign, said the most notable organizational mistake by the Gore team in Florida was not having legal and media teams on the ground faster. It's a different story now: The Obama and Romney campaigns have armies of lawyers and volunteers ready to monitor voting places and launch challenges if they see anything suspicious. "There has been steady progression in terms of the level of preparation, planning, and training with every election cycle since 2000," says Kendall Coffey, a high-profile Florida attorney who also worked on Gore's campaign and is part of the Democrats' legal team this year.


But there could be a new problem that wasn't present in 2000: If any recount does occur, there's much potential for confusion due to restrictive voter ID laws engineered by the GOP. "The administration of new controversial voting laws in the midst of a recount could make the recount that much more complicated, difficult, drawn out, litigated, and scrutinized," says Jennie Bowser, an expert in election law and procedures at the National Conference of State Legislatures. The implementation of these laws could lead to the use of more provisional ballots, which are given to voters in disputed circumstances, and only counted in the event of a close outcome. Handling these could become the sticking point of a 2012 recount. If more provisional ballots are put in play, there will be more votes for each side to argue over, with each team of attorneys, no doubt, questioning those provisional ballots that they suspect contain votes for the other side.

"Most of the time in most elections the number of provisional ballots wouldn't matter," says Jeffrey Robinson, a former Gore attorney who now works at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. But this year "the level of scrutiny will be extreme…How provisional ballots are handled could be important in a close state," he says. MORE AT LINK

[phasma ex machina]

1. It's really not that close. Obama's been ahead since day one and still leads in the polls 290 to 248

[flamingdem]

2. There's more going on than Presidental, it could happen down ballot

as well.