Ohio Electors Pick Bush, Despite Challenge

The Ohio delegation to the electoral college cast its votes for President Bush on Monday, hours after dissident groups asked the state Supreme Court to review the outcome of the state’s presidential balloting.

As members of the electoral college met across the nation to affirm the results of last month’s election, Ohio’s 20 GOP electors voted unanimously for Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

“The vast majority of people understand this election is over,” said Republican Gov. Robert A. Taft, who was at the electors’ voting session in the state Senate chamber.

The challengers who went to the Supreme Court question whether Bush won the swing state by 119,000 votes, guaranteeing his victory over Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry.

The court did not act on the request before the electors cast their ballots.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson and attorney Clifford Arnebeck of the Massachusetts-based Alliance for Democracy accused Bush’s campaign of “high-tech vote stealing.” Jackson said the challengers noticed Bush generally received more votes in counties that used optical-scan voting machines and questioned whether the machines were calibrated to record votes for Bush.

Critics of the election charge that there were disparities in vote totals for Democrats, too few voting machines in Democrat-leaning precincts, organized campaigns directing voters to the wrong polling place and confusion over the counting of provisional ballots by voters whose names did not appear in the records at polling places.

The challengers allege unlawful ballots were added to the total and that legally cast ballots were altered. Without listing specific evidence, the complaint alleges 130,656 votes for Kerry and Sen. John Edwards in 36 counties were switched to count for the Bush-Cheney ticket.

The complaint also cites several reports of election day problems, including people who allegedly saw their votes “hop” to Bush on touch-screen machines after they voted for Kerry.

If the court decides to hear the challenge, it can declare a new winner or throw out the results.

“While the existence of anomalies could possibly be explained by human error or technical malfunctions, the fact that, in every case in Ohio known to the contesters, the error favored the Bush-Cheney ticket, strongly indicates manipulation or fraud,” the challengers said in a court filing.

Congressional Democrats sent a letter to the governor on Monday, asking him to delay the electoral vote or at least consider the results unofficial until the disputes were resolved.