The Obama campaign may be prepared for all sorts of scenarios in their pursuit of an Election Day victory, but are they ready for the possibility of a massive vote recount after the election?
Former presidential Chief of Staff William Daley raised the specter of a recount reminiscent of the 2000 presidential election in an interview with The Daily Beast website published Monday. Daley pointed to the closeness of the presidential race in several battlegrounds states, which he says makes such a scenario possible.
Daley told the website that he had broached the topic with Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod, and that Axelrod reassured him that the campaign has plenty of lawyers on hand. Daley said, however, that the Democrats don’t seem to have the kind of operation necessary to parachute into battleground states and do the sophisticated legal work to wage such a battle.
The same kind of ill-preparedness might have hurt Democrat Al Gore in 2000 when he lost the election to Republican George W. Bush after the recount in Florida, Daley said. Bush then beefed up his legal team in advance of his 2004 contest with Democrat John Kerry, in case the results were again extremely close.
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