Why do we have to wait 11 days, just to START counting the provisional votes? Shouldn’t there be some legal basis against this? I mean Florida at least have some tangible delay… (if this chad or that chad etc.) but what rational basis is there to wait 11 days?
State law requires the delay before counting provisional ballots. Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell said as much months ago. Meanwhile the votes already cast will be retallied.
If anything, I suspect that the current 134,000 vote gap in Ohio will widen as GOP challengers find reasons to discard Democratic votes, especially those from new voters.
Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell ® gave a simple answer: “It’s the law.” He went on to (try to) explain that the idea was to just let them rest for a while before counting them. I’m not sure what the logic behind that is, or why 11 days was chosen, but that’s what he said. I also don’t know what the relevant law is, or how likely it is that the law could be overturned, but you can be sure that someone will try.
You don’t think there will be Democrats trying to disqualify Republican votes?
cstamets. The point is moot. Democrats would have to disqualify more than 134,000 Republican votes just to give Kerry a decent shot of taking the state, and that’s not likely to happen in excess of the far more publicized Republican effort to monitor the polls, launch challenges and eliminate Democratic ballots in this state. Clinton victories aside, this is a fundamentally conservative state. I don’t believe that the provisional ballots waiting to be counted are going to be skewing Kerry’s way. I mean, granted my county voted blue but was a hard-won fight.
Hey. At some point hope floats and reality has to set in. Right now I feel my candidate lost. More power to us all in the leadership of our country the next 4 years.
The gap will no doubt change, but I don’t think it’ll change much. IIRC all the arguing in Florida in 2000 only managed to change the status of a number of ballots a couple orders of magnitude below the current gap in Ohio. The provisional ballots will make a more substantial difference, but only a scenario which is very favorable for the Democrats would result in a Kerry win. For example, if the Democrats are right that there are 250,000 provisional ballots and 90% of them are counted (as was the case in 2000), around 180,000 of those would have to go to Kerry in order for him to win Ohio. That’s 80%, which is better than he did in Cleveland.
Kerry needs 136,222 votes to close the gap, assuming it stays the same as it was when CNN reported 100% of the precincts, plus at least half the remaining votes to hold the lead. It’s mathematically possible for him to win as long as more than that number of provisional ballots are accepted, but whether it’s realistic is a different matter.
A final question – have all the absentee ballots been counted? I’ve heard different sources say different things about this.
I read that there are about 170,000 provisional ballots outstanding, but this includes absentee ballots, and ballots cast by the military.
Also, I’ve heard that there was a lot of shady business with some of the voter registration drives, with lots of names like Mickey Mouse and Clark Kent, and lots of invalid addresses. So the number of valid provisional ballots might be considerably lower than 90%.
You’d think someone trying to register a fake person to vote would at least use a believable fake name and a real fake address… =) If someone showed up and said they were Mickey Mouse, would they actually get a provisional ballot? Does everyone whose eligibility is challenged get a provisional ballot, or are some people turned away?
Nope. (easy factual answer to question 
)
IME, if someone shows up, claims they are Mickey Mouse, and can provide no ID that they are Mickey Mouse and are a valid registered voter in the precinct, then they can get a provisional ballot but it’s not going to be counted. It’s a waste of their own time, but if they insist…