Yes, all the votes need to be verified, even where a clear winner has been announced, but it's more important to do the CLOSE states (and counties and Congressional districts) FIRST, because once the votes are CERTIFIED -- usually about 10-14 days after the election -- it's much harder to do anything about it if you find errors.

In Ohio, BTW, it appears Blackwell doesn't plan to even count all the PAPER ballots. He first swore he would count all the "provisional" ballots, but I'm not sure if he's stuck by that commitment, now that Kerry's conceded the election. Also, I don't believe he ever promised to count all the ABSENTEE ballots. (In many states, they end up being thrown out without being counted unless it looks like some race depends on it.

Given that Kerry was only about 150,000 votes behind Bush in Ohio at last count -- with about 150,000 to 175,000 provisional ballots and who knows how many thousands of absentee ballots (including those from lower-income black soldiers) still uncounted.

The provisional ballots in Ohio are likely to be overwhelmingly Democrat votes, because the "challenges" were mainly made by Republicans and in heavily Democratic precincts. Overseas non-military votes usually favor Democrats, and the ground soldiers in Iraq may not be as solidly behind Bush as the Republicans would like us to believe. It's outrageous NOT to count ALL votes in Ohio.

Even if it didn't change the final outcome of the election, counting all the votes might yield a very different picture of how wide/narrow Bush's margin was in Ohio -- and thus in the electoral college -- and in the nationwide popular vote.

More at counteveryvote.org

and blackboxvoting.org