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A judge ordered Ohio's county elections boards Thursday to preserve ballots from the 2004 presidential election - a move activists hope will help prove allegations of fraud.
Federal law requires the counties to keep the ballots for 22 months after the election, which was this week.
The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by plaintiffs ranging from the Ohio Voter Rights Alliance for Democracy to the head of a Columbus neighborhood association that accuses Secretary of State Ken Blackwell of depriving many blacks of the right to vote in 2004 by distributing fewer voting machines per person in black neighborhoods. It seeks to remove him from overseeing the upcoming Nov. 7 election.
Blackwell, who is black, has drawn criticism for his oversight of the 2004 election and his simultaneous honorary role on Bush's re-election committee. President Bush beat Democrat John Kerry in Ohio by 118,000 votes, gaining the electoral votes that kept him in the White House.
Attorney Cliff Arnebeck, who represents the plaintiffs, asked Blackwell to order the state's 88 counties to secure the ballots. Blackwell said he lacked the authority to do so. In Thursday's decision, U.S. District Court Algenon Marbley ordered the counties to preserve the ballots until further notice.
Plaintiffs hope by preserving the ballots they'll be able to collect evidence for the groups' allegations that some punch-card ballots may have been pre-punched, rendering them invalid if punched again, and that some absentee ballots in Republican-leaning counties were counted twice, Arnebeck said.
"In order to nail that down, you want to have access to all the ballots," Arnebeck said.
A message seeking comment was left Thursday evening with a spokesman for the secretary of state's office.
In January 2005, Arnebeck - representing similar clients - dropped a challenge to Ohio's 2004 election results after Ohio Chief Justice Thomas Moyer called evidence in the case "woefully inadequate."
Mexican "presidente" Lopez Obrador said he admired their blind tenacity and recommended they draw up an alternative constitution and install their own president