Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry may have hummed along to Bruce Springsteen’s song “No Surrender,” but the Green Party’s living the lyrics. While Kerry and the Democratic Party quickly threw in the towel and conceded the election to our once-and-future Chimp in Chief, Green Party candidate David Cobb is calling for a recount of the Ohio vote. Doing so requires a fee of more than $113,000, but the Greens didn’t blink. Word went out to the faithful, and the Greens responded with lots of green.
“The grassroots support for a recount has been astounding,” GP mouthpiece Blair Bobier said in a statement released Monday. A $150,000 ante was raised in just four days.
Is it worth it? We’ll let Jonathan Turley, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University who provided election analysis to CBS News, answer.
In a statement posted on the Institute for Public Accuracy’s Web site (accuracy.org), Turley notes that because of a number of factors — including allegations of over-voting and machine malfunction, along with provisional ballots (whose validity has yet to be determined), absentee ballots and punch card ballots (those of the hanging chads) — there’s certainly room to challenge.
“This is not to say that a recount is likely to change the result of the election,” Turley writes, “but it is not an impossibility.”
Given all that’s at stake, the Greens deserve our wholehearted appreciation (as well as all the cash we can spare) to keep this fight going as long as there’s a ray of hope.
Come on, John, sing along.
News Hits is edited by Curt Guyette. Contact this column at 313-202-8004 or NewsHits@metrotimes.com
