Candidates Officially Request Ohio Recount
With support from John Kerry's campaign, two third-party candidates for president officially asked on Tuesday for a recount in Ohio, the state that put President Bush over the top in November. The requests, mailed to all 88 counties, were expected to arrive by Wednesday. Generally, county election boards must agree to a recount, as long as the parties bringing the challenge pay for it. And the Green and Libertarian parties collected enough donations to cover the required $113,600, or $10 per precinct. David Cobb, Green Party presidential candidate, said the election was full of irregularities, including uncounted provisional ballots. "There is a possibility that George W. Bush did not win Ohio. If that is the case, it would be a crime against democracy for George Bush to be sworn into office," he said. Cobb got 186 votes in Ohio. Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik received 14,695, or 0.26 percent of the overall total. The request came a day after Ohio officially certified Bush as the winner of this battleground state by 118,775 votes. The president's unofficial election-night margin of 136,000 votes shrank slightly after provisional and absentee ballots were counted and errors corrected. Bush won the presidency by taking Ohio's 20 electoral votes, bringing his total to 286 over Kerry's 252. Kerry conceded the morning after the election when presented with the state's results. [more] Scroll down for more.