Lucas County recount to begin Tuesday

[sabra]

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http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041209/NEWS09/412090478/-1/NEWS

Lucas County recount to begin Tuesday
Hopefuls force issue in presidential race

By FRITZ WENZEL
BLADE STAFF WRITER


The Green Party and Libertarian Party have triggered a recount of the Nov. 2 presidential election in Lucas County, a recount that will cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.

The Lucas County board of elections yesterday announced it would begin a recount Tuesday, giving time for all presidential campaigns to be notified of its plans as required by law.

...

The request to Lucas County asks the board to hand count the more than 200,000 votes cast in the Nov. 2 election, but board members agreed they would instead follow state law governing recounts, which could speed the process. State law provides for counties to hand count a random sampling of 3 percent of their total vote, and then to run those same ballots through an automated counting machine, if one is available. If the results of the hand count and the machine count match exactly, the county may machine-count the rest of the ballots cast in the election.

If there's a discrepancy between the hand and machine counts of the random 3 percent, the entire countywide vote must be counted by hand, according to the state revised code.


...

The board also amended its earlier certification of the November election to reflect corrections made to vote totals in some races. Four elections workers were suspended with pay last week because of the mistakes.

Three workers, including supervisor Bruce Temple and Paula Lykowski, a top aide to elections Director Paula Hicks-Hudson, received a one-day unpaid suspension for their involvement in what Ms. Hicks-Hudson called the "clerical error" in the counting of ballots. The fourth worker, supervisor Larry Loutzenhiser, resigned Monday over the matter.

The error was a failure to run one ballot through a counter in the process of the official count. The ballot changed the outcome of six races by one vote, but had no impact on the results of any race. Mr. Loutzenhiser was in charge of those running ballots through the optical scan counters. He will receive a severance package of about $15,000, Ms. Hicks-Hudson said.


Contact Fritz Wenzel at:
[e-mail]
or 419-724-6134.

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[sabra]

1. I am curious about this "clerical error"

How was this detected? How many other occurrences could there have been in other Counties?

[life_long_dem]

2. I'm guessing there will be a full hand recount. What are the odds

that the 3% (hand vs. machine) tallies will match? It only has to be off by 1 vote, correct?

[sabra]

3. If it's a 1 vote discrepancy, then I have no doubt

that there will be full hand recount...

[jsascj]

4. I just can't make myself feel too badly for the

taxpayers having to pay for it. That's the cost of having a crooked SOS.

[life_long_dem]

5. I read somewhere it will cost less than 25 cents per voter.

The government will give someone millions of dollars to study why cats and dogs fight, so a quarter is an insignificant amount.

[AnarchoFreeThinker]

7. compare the "wasted" taxpayer $$$ of a recount to the

wasted taxpayer $$$ of an election with reseults that didn't reflect the taxpayer's will.

[trudyco]

6. The elections supervisor got fired for missing 1 vote -huh?? nt

[sabra]

8. Something is odd there... n/t

[consciousobjector]

9. The state made money off of this election

As one of the major "battleground states" this year, Ohio saw a huge influx of money from the campaign. Surely the state will realize a fair amount of additional tax revenue as a result.

A number if businesses were disappointed that an election dispute did not immediately follow the election, as many businesses were expecting the campaign money to continue to flow.

I think the state should look on this recount as an opportunity to bring more business into Ohio. The state has been known to give tax breaks and other incentives to bring business to Ohio this isn't so different.