Five years ago today the Ohio Recount started.
With election anomalies showing up all over the Buckeye State in 2004, and no "major" party candidate willing to question them, presidential candidates David Cobb of the Green Party and Libertarian Michael Badnarik showed the courage to stand up and call for a recount as an investigation.
On December 13, 2004 recounting began in Board of Elections offices all over Ohio. The Green Party had over 2000 volunteer observers trained and they were deployed in every one of the 88 Ohio counties. Many Democrats and members of other parties helped. As one of the nine regional coordinators helping the Greens to prepare the observers, I was in Jefferson County (Steubenville) that morning and personally I will never forget the feeling of being part of history. I will also not forget the feeling of being under observation by armed Sheriff's Deputies as we observed the proceedings. The days between the November 2004 presidential election and the certification of the electoral votes in Congress on January 6, 2005 were tense, high-strung, and amazing.
For many of us who were on the ground in Ohio that day, the recount was a life-changing experience. Once we dealt with the messes we saw in the counties and the shenanigans of the (at the time) Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, there was no going back on this issue.e.
Even though Blackwell basically stalled everything and pretty much made the actual recounting useless, as most of you know the Ohio Recount was a major force that directly led to much of the Election Integrity movement that subsequently developed.
It is tragically sad that in the past several years this Election Integrity movement has not risen to this challenge that started in 2004, and that we have not come together on a realistic solution that would provide EVERY county in every state with secure, accessible, recountable, and accurate elections. Just days ago my own state of Pennsylvania, with 50 of our largest counties still using paperless Direct Recording Electronic voting machines, conducted a statutorily-required statewide "recount" of a Superior Court race that was nothing more than a meaningless reprint of the election-night results.
As we face 2010 with millions of Americans still throwing our votes into paperless DREs, and with the threat of Internet Voting looming on the horizon, my personal wish remains for a true voter-marked and voter-verified paper ballot and meaningful election audits to protect every vote in our nation.
Yes, we can -- if we want to.
demodonkey (Eastern Ohio Regional Coordinator, 2004 Ohio Recount)
PS -- For those who don't know the story, please see the website of the Ohio Recount preserved at the link below.
http://www.iwantmyvote.com/recount/ 
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