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Sure, President Bush is busy shuffling his cabinet and setting an agenda
for the next four years, but that doesn't make a difference to them.
They still have issues.
"We're never going to know for sure unless we do a recount," said Robert
Fitrakis, a lawyer and political science professor at Columbus State
Community College, in Ohio. "The machines do mess up. It happens all the
time."
This is the kind of information that comes out of any election year;
however, the difference this time is the intensity of the allegations
saying Bush did not legitimately win re-election.
It's much higher. Plus, it's everywhere.
From Internet blogs crying foul to communities across the critical state
of Ohio asking for a second opinion, some people just won't let the 2004
election drop, and they're even taking their case to court.
Fitrakis has spent years monitoring elections in third-world countries
and served as moderator at an event Saturday in Columbus, Ohio, that
gave voters a chance to express their disappointments with the state's
voting procedures.
With more than 200 people in attendance, Fitrakis said a handful of
issues came to light, including minimal voting machines being provided
for thousands of voters, and election observers trying to intimidate
voters out of polling lines. He said earlier this week he expected at
least two lawsuits to be filed in Ohio by today.
Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio's secretary of state, has acknowledged some
problems with the state's electoral problems this year but said they are
not substantial enough to alter the results of the vote.
"We had some anomalies in the system that were caught at the county
level and corrected," Blackwell said. "The fact of the matter is there
is no evidence that this will change in any significant way the result."
Still, that hasn't stopped multiple groups from demanding a recount. One
of the most prolific that has emerged is that fronted by Bev Harris, a
former journalist and electronic voting activist, whose Black Box Voting
organization has begun raising money to perform a private recount.
Although repeated attempts by the Daily Egyptian to contact the
organization failed - the group's message box was filled on each attempt
to call and e-mails went unanswered - Black Box Voting has amassed a
broad amount of media coverage.
Recently, Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik joined
forces with the group to demand a full recount in the state of Ohio.
Although most pundits say there is no way enough evidence could be
presented to prove fraud in the election, groups such as Black Box
Voting claim to have garnered a notable series of statistics to support
their claims.
For instance, according to the group, several thousand votes were
tallied for Bush in Ohio's Cuyahoga County that were later demonstrated
as false. Bush had, in fact, garnered thousands of more votes in the
county than there even are voters. In Florida, the organization says
that similar discrepancies have been uncovered, with some counties
predominately registered as Democratic voting for Bush.
Even as lawyers for Democrat John Kerry begin working in Ohio, and
filmmaker Michael Moore starts work on a follow-up to his documentary
"Fahrenheit 9/11" that will discuss alleged problems in Ohio and
Florida, the presidency marches on.
Illinois Sen.-elect Barack Obama, on a victory tour in Carbondale Nov.
12, said he doesn't always agree with Bush's politics but can see no way
in which Kerry could have won the election.
Obama said the best thing to do now is look toward the future and make
sure these problems don't resurface four years from now.
"There were significant irregularities," Obama said of this year's
election. "We did not solve all the 2000 problems. We need to make sure
that four years from now, we're not dealing with the same problems we
were this year. But George Bush won fair and square."
Daily Egyptian 
