Secretary of State William Gardner says his office is ready for Wednesday's re-count of New Hampshire's Democratic presidential primary.

Democrat Dennis Kucinich has paid $27,000 to Gardner's office to start the re-count. Election officials tell WBZ-TV that the recount could take up to a month.

Kucinich, who received less than 2 percent of the vote, says he is suspicious of the results, although he doesn't expect a re-count to change his vote count much. Kucinich alluded to online reports alleging disparities around the state between hand-counted ballots, which tended to favor Sen. Barack Obama, and machine-counted ones that tended to favor Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. He also noted the difference between pre-election polls, which indicated Obama would win, and Clinton's triumph by a 39 percent to 37 percent margin.

"We have no control over the ballot chain of custody and we have learned the pain from the 2004 Nader recount, in which only 11 districts were counted, chosen by a highly questionable person, and then nothing showed up. Now all we hear is how the Nader recount validated the machines."

As Tobi says, "A candidate asking for a recount may well be a tool used to 'prove' everything was okay and then that candidate will be further discredited."

I'll go further than that. The only way a recount makes any sense at all in New Hampshire is AFTER an assessment is made of the chain of custody issues. If the chain of custody isn't intact the recount won't be worth a cup of warm spit.