By Brad Friedman on 11/15/2004, 12:28pm PT  

According to the Nashua, NH Telegraph it appears that Ralph Nader's demand for a recount in New Hampshire will in fact occur:

Nader has initially asked state election officials to count ballots in eight communities, including Litchfield and Pelham, but he has the right to a statewide recount as long as he pays the entire cost, Secretary of State Bill Gardner said.
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The earliest this recount could begin is Nov. 24, the day before Thanksgiving Day. That's because the next two weeks are already packed with more than a dozen recounts of legislative races.
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Nader has alleged that “irregularities'' in the optical scanning voting machines appear to have inflated the totals that Bush should have gotten in several key states.

Cities and towns in New Hampshire all either use paper ballots or these optical scan ballots manufactured by the Diebold Corp., whose chief executives contributed to Bush's re-election.
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Nader campaign officials questioned Gardner this week about why Bush got a much higher percentage of the vote in southern New Hampshire communities against Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry than he did four years ago against Vice President Al Gore.

All eight communities that Nader has asked to be recounted first - Litchfield, Pelham, Sandown, Newton, a ward in Somersworth, Danville, Salem and four wards in Manchester - are within a half-hours drive from the Massachusetts border.

“They couldn't understand why Senator Kerry could do so well in these communities in the primary and then under-perform compared to the 2000 election against Bush,'' Gardner said.
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“We made every effort to accommodate the Nader campaign's recount request, and as a result it will come to pass,'' Fitch added.

                 

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