COLUMBUS, OHIO ? The Ohio Supreme Court’s chief justice on Thursday threw out a challenge to the state’s presidential election results.

But the 40 voters who brought the case will likely be able to refile the challenge.

Nancy Bihary and Anastasia Pantsios, right, look at a ballot during a recount Thursday at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in Cleveland. Passion surrounding the presidential election has refused to allow the door to close completely on the race in Ohio, where election officials and the Democrat and Republican campaigns say a recount so far has not turned up major changes in results or evidence of widespread problems.

Chief Justice Thomas Moyer ruled that the request improperly challenged two separate election results. Ohio law only allows one race to be challenged in a single complaint, he said.

The challenge was backed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Cliff Arnebeck, a Columbus attorney for the Massachusetts-based Alliance for Democracy, who accused Bush’s campaign of “high-tech vote stealing.”

Claiming fraud, the voters cited reports of voting-machine errors, double-counting of some ballots and a shortage of voting machines in predominantly minority precincts as reasons to throw out the election results.

Ohio and its 20 electoral votes determined the outcome of the election, tipping the race to President Bush.

The challenge before Moyer included the results of the presidential race and of Moyer’s race against a Cleveland municipal judge.

The allegations in the challenge are based on a statewide analysis comparing the presidential race to the chief justice race.

But nothing in state law or any previous court decision allows challenges to be combined, Moyer said.

“Were this court to sanction consolidation here it would establish a precedent whereby twenty-five voters could challenge, in a single case, the election results of every statewide race and issue on the ballot in any given election,” Moyer wrote.