Ohio Voters’ Challenge Is Dismissed

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Ohio Supreme Court’s chief justice on Thursday threw out a challenge to the state’s presidential election results.

A lawyer for the voters bringing the case said he would refile the challenge.

Chief Justice Thomas Moyer ruled that the request improperly challenged two separate election results. Ohio law allows only one race to be challenged in a single complaint, he said.

The challenge was backed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Cliff Arnebeck, a Columbus lawyer for the Massachusetts-based Alliance for Democracy.

Claiming fraud, the voters cited reports of voting machine errors, double counting of ballots and a shortage of voting machines in predominantly minority precincts as reasons to throw out the results.

Ohio and its 20 electoral votes determined the outcome of the election, tipping the race to President Bush. The state declared Bush the winner by 119,000 votes, but counties are in the middle of a recount -- requested by two minor party candidates and supported by Sen. John F. Kerry’s campaign.

The complaint questioned how the results could show Bush winning when exit-poll findings on election night indicated that Kerry would win 52% of Ohio’s presidential vote.

Without listing specific evidence, the complaint alleges that 130,656 votes for Kerry and John Edwards in 36 counties were somehow switched to count for the Bush-Cheney ticket.

The allegations are based on an analysis comparing the presidential race to Moyer’s Supreme Court race against a Cleveland municipal judge. But nothing in state law or any previous court decision allows challenges to be combined, Moyer said.

Arnebeck said that although he believed he was permitted to contest two elections with a common set of facts, “we’re going to go with the flow.”

Filing the challenge again today would depend on gathering the voters’ signatures again, he said.