December 28, 2004

Green Party "welcome[s] Senator Kerry's belated interest in ensuring the integrity of the Ohio recount"

COBB/LaMARCHE 2004 GREEN PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

http://www.votecobb.org


NEWS RELEASE


For immediate release: December 27, 2004

Contact: Blair Bobier, Media Director at 541.929.5755

KERRY JOINS COBB'S REQUEST TO PRESERVE EVIDENCE IN OHIO RECOUNT

The Motion filed by Green Party presidential candidate David
Cobb last week, asking a Federal Court to preserve a wide range of evidence
to ensure the integrity of the Ohio recount, was officially supported by the
Kerry-Edwards campaign today.

"Senator Kerry filed a Motion today which essentially says
nothing more than 'me, too' to our filing from last week," said Blair
Bobier, Media Director for the Cobb-LaMarche campaign.

Cobb's attorneys on Thursday had filed a Motion for a
Preservation Order and for Leave to Take Limited Expedited Discovery in the
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio where recount
litigation is pending. The Motion, filed on behalf of Cobb, Libertarian
presidential candidate Michael Badnarik and the National Voting Rights
Institute, requested that voting machines and election records be preserved.

"We welcome Senator Kerry's belated interest in ensuring the
integrity of the Ohio recount. This effort, initiated by the Green and
Libertarian presidential candidates, has been focusing on the integrity of
the election process and not on the outcome. In order to trust the election
results, we have to trust the process. All presidential candidates,
including George W. Bush, who are committed to an open and accountable
voting system should demand an investigation into an election clouded by
serious allegations of fraud and suppression," said Bobier.

The Ohio recount has been plagued with almost as many problems
as the underlying presidential election. One of the more notable instances
took place on December 10, in Hocking County, Ohio, when a representative
from Triad Governmental Systems, Inc. reprogrammed a computer used for
tabulating votes and instructed the county's Deputy Director of Elections to
create a "cheat sheet" so "the count would come out perfect and we wouldn't
have to do a full hand recount of the county." Triad later reported working
on voting machines in a number of other counties prior to the initiation of
the recount.

The Hocking County incident was first revealed to the public by
David Cobb during his testimony before the Congressional Forum chaired by
Representative John Conyers in Columbus, Ohio on December 13.

Legal documents filed in the Ohio recount litigation, along with
detailed reports from official recount observers detailing the error-ridden
recount, can be found on the Cobb-LaMarche website, http://www.votecobb.org.
Information about the Green Party can be found at http://www.gp.org.

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