Kinda warms my liberal heart.
Election boards all across Ohio have started counting "provisional
ballots" in the presidential election. These are the ballots that
were given to voters who believed they were registered but whose
names didn't appear on the precinct list on election day. The
verification process may take up to two weeks. In most states,
approximately 85 percent of all provisional ballots are eventually
verified and counted in the final vote tally. And the early reports
out of Ohio suggest the "count" list in some counties will be as
high as 90 percent.
As it stands, there are approximately 155,000 provisional ballots.
So, one can expect at least 130,000 ballots to be verified
and "added to the final count."
There is another number that will eventually come into play in the
Buckeye state... and that's the number of "spoiled ballots." The
Green/Libertarian coalition, through recountohio.org, has already
raised enough money to pay for a statewide recount. And the group is
now raising even more cash so they can hire recount monitors. A
statewide recount will include a visual examination of all
93,000 "spoiled ballots" that indicated "no" vote for President.
(The "no vote" is usually a machine-tabulation problem because of
chads, hanging chads, and etc.) A brilliant e-mailer named Matthew
Fox has analyzed which counties reported "spoiled ballots." And it
does appear that approximately 60 pecent of all the spoiled ballots
come from heavily Democratic urban areas.
Can the "provisional ballots" and "spoiled ballots" change the Ohio
outcome? As it stands, the difference between President Bush and
John Kerry is 136,483 votes. When John Kerry decided to concede,
here is some of the math his campaign looked at:
If you assume, for the sake of argument, that Kerry receives 80
percent of the 130,000 provisional ballots most observers expect
will be validated... Kerry would receive 104,000 votes and President
Bush would get 26,000. That's a net gain for John Kerry of 78,000.
At that point, the margin between President Bush and Senator Kerry
would drop to 58,000 votes.
Now, let's assume a preference can be determined on all 93,000
spoiled ballots. And let's also assume John Kerry receives 80% and
President Bush receives 20%. John Kerry would receive 74,400 votes
and President Bush would receive 18,600 votes. That's another net
gain for John Kerry of 55,800. However, that still leaves John
Kerry 3,000 votes short. And remember, the theory that Kerry is
going to receive 80% of all provisional and "spoiled" ballots is not
realistic. As the Kerry campaign noted on November 3, "the votes
are just not going to be there."
However, there is one other number that has been the talk of the
Net... and that's the number of "tallies" that might have been
hacked or changed by somebody who left some nefarious "code" on the
Windows systems tabulating the county by county vote. If that
actually happened, it's not clear that a statewide recount would
detect such a break-in as it affects "electronic voting" machines.
But, given that 70% of Ohio used punch cards... most of the state
does have a "paper trail." And the recount, when it happens, should
settle these allegations once and for all.