toledoblade.com --

COLUMBUS - Ohio's 51st Electoral College unanimously cast its 20 votes yesterday for President Bush and Dick Cheney, two hours after activists led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson asked the Ohio Supreme Court to overturn the outcome and make Democrats John Kerry and John Edwards the winners.

"The Electoral College puts the final punctuation mark on Ohio's role in the most important election of our lifetime," said Bob Bennett, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party.

Gov. Bob Taft told the electors he spoke by phone with Mr. Bush last Friday afternoon.

"He wanted me to tell you how grateful he is for Ohio's support; without that support he would not be elected as our president," said Mr. Taft, who was chairman of Mr. Bush's campaign in Ohio.

About two hours before the Electoral College convened at the Statehouse, attorney Cliff Arnebeck filed a lawsuit in the Ohio Supreme Court contesting the election of Mr. Bush and also Republican Chief Justice Thomas Moyer.

Mr. Arnebeck, attorney for the Alliance for Democracy in Massachusetts, asked the high court on behalf of 40 voters to decertify Mr. Bush's electors and certify the electors for Democrat John Kerry. The court did not respond.

Mr. Arnebeck had said for three weeks he would contest the presidential results in Ohio. "This is the soonest we could get it filed," he said yesterday morning.

The lawsuit alleges - without offering evidence - that votes were taken away from Mr. Kerry's column and added to Mr. Bush's. It refers to a "pattern of vote fraud and discrimination," problems with voting machines around the state, and asserts that electronic voting machines could have been hacked.

Mr. Arnebeck also questioned the gap between exit polls and the certified results in Ohio, and why Mr. Kerry received 138,289 more votes in Cuyahoga County than Democratic state Supreme Court candidate C. Ellen Connally. Judge Connally is from Cuyahoga County.

Yet, she fared better proportionally than Mr. Kerry in some southern Ohio counties, Mr. Arnebeck said.

Supreme Court candidates don't have their party affiliation on the general election ballot.

"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 lawsuit said.

Asked about the lawsuit after Ohio's Electoral College cast their ballots, Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell said: "I believe that we have a strong, bipartisan system that has been administered by people of integrity, and produced a clean result that will withstand yet another round of court challenge."

Mark Weaver, an attorney representing the Ohio Republican Party, referred to Mr. Arnebeck and his allies as "people who still cannot acknowledge reality, and they're going to use the legal system to try to change Ohio's vote. Their likelihood of success is zero."

A day after the election, Mr. Kerry conceded after concluding that the counting of provisional ballots in Ohio would not prevent Mr. Bush from winning the state's 20 electoral votes.

On Dec. 6, Mr. Blackwell, who was associate chairman of Mr. Bush's campaign in Ohio, certified the official results, with Mr. Bush defeating Mr. Kerry by 118,775 votes - 50.82 percent to 48.70 percent.

U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, said the Ohio Electoral College meeting should have been delayed or the tally considered provisional until a recount starting this week is completed.

The presidential candidates of the Green and Libertarian parties sought the recount.

Mr. Kerry's campaign said it supports a recount, but does not believe it will overturn Mr. Bush's victory in Ohio.

Mr. Jackson, acting as a liaison for Mr. Kerry, sent letters to Ohio's 88 county election boards and made 11 requests including:

●A "scientifically valid random sampling method" for the selection of precincts for the 3 percent of ballots that are counted by hand.

●Allowing each candidate to select at least one precinct for a hand count.

●Allowing the candidates to have the "programming and calibration of the tabulating systems, scanners, and electronic voting machines verified by independent experts."

Mr. Jackson accused Republicans of trying to reduce the number of votes from African-Americans by challenging their voter registrations and failing to have enough voting machines in heavily Democratic precincts.

"We don't believe the Secretary of State is part of any conspiracy that engaged in a kind of fraud," said Mr. Jackson, adding that Mr. Blackwell has acknowledged "glitches" on Election Day.

"The voting machines are too susceptible to glitches," said Mr. Jackson. "Who got glitched? How many glitches are there? Where were the glitches? Is there a pattern of glitches?"

Mr. Weaver, the Ohio GOP attorney, said there also were long lines on Nov. 2 in several Republican precincts around the state.

"The notion that somehow there was a conspiracy to change this vote requires the Democrat boards of election members to be in on the conspiracy. Nobody with any credibility believes that," he said.

Contact James Drew at:
jdrew@theblade.com
or 614-221-0496.

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