Slowly and inexorably, John Kerry keeps moving towards mounting a vote challenge like the one in Florida that paralyzed the executive branch in 2000. Last night, the AP reported that the Kerry campaign now wants to inspect ballots cast without a vote for president:

Democrat John Kerry is asking county elections officials to allow his witnesses to inspect the 92,000 ballots cast in Ohio in which no vote for president was recorded, a Kerry lawyer said Sunday night.

The request is one of 11 the Kerry campaign made in a letter sent over the weekend to Ohio's 88 county boards of election, which will begin recounting presidential ballots this week.

"We're trying to increase the transparency of the election process," said Donald McTigue, the lawyer handling the recount for the Kerry campaign. But he added that several requests — such as using independent experts to check election equipment, "are trying to push the edge of envelope."

It's not just pushing the envelope, a phrase that McTigue can't even get correct; these new requests attempt in a cowardly, passive-aggressive way to create a demand for a full recount and a withdrawal of Kerry's concession. What they want is Ohio to rise up and do what Kerry himself is apparently too much of a chicken to do himself.

So far, Ohio has responded with a yawn, so Kerry's lawyers keep requesting more and more provocative measures to garner headlines and create more controversy -- hoping that controversy will generate pressure to re-open the entire Ohio vote count. Failing that, Kerry wants to delegitimize Bush's victory in the Buckeye state and start yet another stolen-election mythology. Why? Kerry has made no secret of his desire to run again in 2008, but running as the man who lost a winnable election doesn't give him much hope for the next one. On the other hand, running as the man from whom Bush stole an election allows Kerry to focus on revenge instead of his own gaping inadequacies as a candidate. It also allows Democrats the same myopia about their party.

Ohio responded by reminding Kerry that the state conducts recounts according to state law, not to conditions set by the candidates. We can expect to see those laws and any others that stand in the way of Democratic mythmaking and Kerry's self-delusion to be challenged in court, derided as Republican conspiracies, and used to smear the officials upholding them. After all, we saw the playbook four years ago.

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» Meanwhile, In Ohio from Pirate's Cove
Democrat John Kerry is asking county elections officials to allow his witnesses to inspect the 92,000 ballots cast in Ohio in which no vote for president was recorded, a Kerry lawyer said Sunday night.Still not proof of fraud or problems.(hat [Read More]

Tracked on December 13, 2004 7:30 AM