A Partial Recount Confirmed

Marc Ambinder

AMES -- Mary Tiffany, an Iowa Republican Party official, confirms that at least one voting machine malfunctioned and that tabulators recounted at least 1500 ballots.

The state party rented optical scan machines from Diebold, a company at the center of several recent voting controversies. Recently, the state of California de-certified Diebold machines for the 2008 election.

Yesterday, Iowans who support Ron Paul failed to get a judge to require a voter-verified paper ballot be used in today's straw poll. Separately, the state party told the Paul campaign that a full paper recount would cost $184,000.

Already, some Paul supporters are whispering about a challenge.

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I think the results are pretty far fetched and it is worth a challenge. I really hope the Ron Paul campaign does not let them walk all over them. This needed to be addressed BEFORE the straw poll and it wasn't. I was called the wacko, weirdo, or the person hurting the campaign.

Here we are now after the poll, where the winners are announced all over TV and radio and TV interviews are being set up as I type. Instead of being proud of the results I would guess that every single Ron Paul supporter, in the back of their minds, are questioning the results. In my opinion, we are in a worse position challenging this after than we would have if we challenged it before hand.

This should be a learning experience for everyone involved.