Dennis Kucinich	Albert Howard

After the 2008 New Hampshire primary, questions were raised about reported discrepancies between those counties and precincts that counted the paper ballots by hand and those that counted the paper ballots using Diebold Opti-Scan machines. Two presidential candidates, Democrat Kucinich and little-known Republican Albert Howard, each requested a recount. While the recounts showed minimal discrepancies between the hand-counted and machine-counted ballots, the accompanying investigation by election integrity advocates revealed startling evidence of faulty chain of custody of ballots and other election materials, destruction of evidence legally required to be preserved, and other unacceptable election conditions. The true vote count cannot be determined conclusively.

Christine Jennings

In Ms. Jennings' race against Vern Buchanan, well over 18,000 of the electronic ballots cast on Sarasota County's ES&S iVotronic touch-screens recorded no vote for a congressional candidate. Mr. Buchanan was declared the winner by less than 400 votes. Ms. Jennings filed a formal challenge to the election results in House of Representatives and a lawsuit in Leon County circuit court asking for a re-vote. The House dismissed her challenge when the Government Accountability Office was unable to exclude the possibility that the voting machines were at fault. Jennings withdrew her lawsuit to focus on her 2008 campaign for the same Congressional seat. It should be noted that the GAO did not examine the source code in the Sarasota County machines. The State of Florida did perform cursory testing of the source code, but David Dill, Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, found the state's tests to be lacking. Ms. Jennings's challenge raised awareness of some of the problems with touch-screen voting systems throughout the nation.

Clint Curtis

As the 2006 election approached, a Zogby poll showed challenger Clint Curtis and the incumbent, Tom Feeney, in a statistical dead heat. However, the election results from the paperless Diebold touch-screen machines showed Mr. Feeney to have won the election 57% to 43%. Mr. Curtis' campaign wanted to examine the Diebold machines and their source code, but this was not allowed. Mr. Curtis and a group of volunteers then conducted a post-election door-to-door, precinct-by-precinct canvas in Florida's 24th district. They collected hundreds of sworn affidavits from voters showing a 12 to 24 point difference from the final election results in Mr. Curtis's favor. Based on these affidavits, Mr. Curtis filed a formal challenge to the election results in the House of Representatives. The House dismissed the challenge without reviewing the evidence or taking testimony.

Read additional fascinating history about Mr. Curtis and Mr. Feeney in regards to the integrity of elections. Mr. Curtis is challenging Rep. Feeney again in 2008 and has taken the Standing For Voters SuperPledge.

Sharron Angle

Sharron Angle, an assemblywoman from Washoe County, Nevada lost in her bid to represent the Republican party in the November general election for Nevada's Second District U.S. House seat by 421 votes. Her opponent was Dean Heller, Nevada's chief election official. After reviewing allegations of poll workers not showing up to open the polling places in Washoe County, Ms. Angle prepared to file a recount request. However, costs of the recount -- including $175,000 to be charged by Sequoia Voting Systems, which manufactured and programmed the voting machines used in the election -- along with the realization that a recount would not re-enfranchise the voters who had been unable to vote led Angle to a different strategy. She dropped the recount and challenged the election results in court. A number of voters testified to having been unable to vote or to having problems with the Sequoia machines, but the case was dismissed when the judge ruled that the problems were not severe enough to change the outcome of the election and that the court lacked jurisdiction in this particular instance.

David Cobb	Michael Badnarik

In the 2004 election, there were countless irregularities in the state of Ohio. David Cobb, Green Party presidential candidate, and Michael Badnarik, Libertarian Party presidential candidate, requested a full recount in Ohio. Neither candidate was claiming a recount might indicate they'd been elected (Cobb of the Green Party was not on the ballot in Ohio but had standing to request a recount because he had received votes in the election). An Ohio judge had declared that the recount need not be expedited unless there was a possibility of the recount overturning the election results. Following this ruling, the Kerry campaign, which conceded the race on November 3, 2004, before all the votes had been counted, joined the recount request. (Regarding Kerry's concession, his campaign claimed that even if the uncounted provisional and absentee ballots, roughly 86,000, were to be counted, it would not be enough to overturn the announced results of the presidential race. However, many saw this as a betrayal of those voters and a key principle of American elections: every vote must be counted.)

There were many discrepancies in the recount itself, including the discovery of white oval stickers placed over the Kerry/Edwards ovals on ballots, and ovals for Bush filled in. Eventually two Cuyahoga County election officials were convicted of felonies for rigging the recount. To this day, legitimate questions remain about how the election was conducted, how the recount was conducted, and what the true results of the election actually were in this state whose electoral votes proved the deciding factor in the presidential election.

Christine Gregoire	Dino Rossi

Washington State's 2004 gubernatorial election between Democrat Christine Gregoire and Republican Dino Rossi was a veritable photo-finish, eventually leading to challenges by both the Republican and Democratic candidates. After the first count was concluded, Rossi was ahead by just 261 votes. Under Washington law, results that close trigger a machine recount. After this recount, which Mr. Rossi was still ahead, but this time only by 42 votes. Because these results were even closer than the first count, the Democratic Party paid approximately $800,000 for a statewide manual recount of all 2.8 million ballots. The results of this second recount left Ms. Gregoire ahead by 129 votes. Rossi's campaign challenged the results in court, claiming that Ms. Gregoire's victory was due to illegal votes. The judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence of illegal voting having changed the outcome, and Ms. Gregoire was declared the winner.