Posted on 11/16/2004 4:17:50 PM PST by Bonaventure
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Most of the presidential election provisional ballots rejected so far in Ohio came from people who were not even registered to vote, election officials said after spending nearly two weeks poring over thousands of disputed votes.
The vast majority of provisional ballots have been legitimate, however. Of the 11 counties that have completed checking ballots, 81 percent of the ballots are valid, according to a survey Monday by The Associated Press.
Unofficial vote totals show President Bush (news - web sites) beating Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites) by 136,000 votes in Ohio, and Kerry has conceded there are not enough outstanding votes to swing the state his way.
It is too early to know whether the provisional ballots have benefited Bush or Kerry because counties first need to determine their validity before conducting the count.
Some people said they were holding out hope for a miracle until all votes were counted. Lawyers with Kerry's campaign were in Ohio to check into voters' concerns about ballots, but said they were not trying to challenge the election.
The counties have until Dec. 1 to complete their final count.
The focus is on the 155,337 provisional ballots cast by Ohio voters. Provisional ballots are cast by voters whose names are not on the rolls for some reason or whose eligibility is otherwise in doubt, and are counted after the election is over if they are deemed valid.
Reasons provisional ballots were rejected in Ohio included missing information such as addresses or signatures and people voting in precincts where they do not live. Other people simply were not registered.
"Some people thought because they had changed their mailing address at the post office, or had changed their utilities, that they had done everything necessary to be eligible to vote.
(Excerpt) Read more at story.news.yahoo.com ...
With the recount coming, who knows though.
It is bothersome to me, in that liberals are stupid and lazy. Hence, they are much more likely to have made some sort of mistake.
Actually, if the 81% is right and if kerry got 100% of the provisionals, that would net him 125,822 more votes or about 11,000 short.
Provisional ballots may slightly favor Kerry -- maybe 55/45. Spoiled ballots are anyone's guess. I doubt very many of them will count, but of those that do, is there any reason to believe they will break disproportionately for Kerry?
81% of 155,000 is about 125,000. Kerry could not win even if every provisional vote went to him.
We already know Kerry can't get 100% of the provisionals, because Warren County has already counted its 1,600 or so provisional ballots. As I understand it, they broke almost exactly as the non-provisional ballots in Warren County did -- about 72% for Bush.
What about the 93,000 spoiled ballots?
Depends on who spoiled them:)
I don't know wnything about that. I assume that if they are spoiled then they are discounted. And that would be that.
By the way, I couldn't see Kerry getting more than 2/3rds of the provisionals.
Not sure if the absentee &/or questionable ballots have been counted/resolved as yet...
My own guess is that Kerry will win the provision ballots by about nine points -- 54.5 to 45.5. Here is my reasoning:
Since November 2, Bush has gained about 1,053,000 votes and Kerry has gained about 1,218,000. In other words, Kerry is winning about 53.6% of the provisional and absentee ballots, which is about 5.5% better than his showing in the general election. If that pattern holds in Ohio, Kerry will win 54.5% of the outstanding ballots in Ohio and Bush will win about 45.5%. If Ohio counts 130,000 provisional ballots, as many people expect, then Kerry will narrow the gap by about 12,000 votes. Ohio also has 93,000 spoiled ballots, but I doubt many of those will count. If they all counted, Kerry might narrow the gap by an additional 8,400.
Even assuming the actual acceptance rate is above 81% but still rounds off to 81%, there aren't enough provisionals to turn it even if they all went for Kerry--at 81.4999% acceptance and all going to Kerry, he comes up about 10,000 short.
Still, it's amusing to watch.
Personally I'm wondering about the unwatched provisional and absentee count in Wisconsin: W was only about 11,000 short of carrying it. I just don't have the patience to monitor all the county-by-county listings which is all the Wisc. SOS posts.
Not possible. Absentees always break for the Republicans (they tend to be more responsible and military). Bush is winning the absentees however there must've been a lot of provisionals for Kerry to show an overall post-election ballot counting increase.
. . . and if so and Bush gets 1/3 of them, Kerry would only net one-third of them.
81% of 155,000 is about 125,000. Kerry could not win even if every provisional vote went to him...
Well he didn't give that concession speech for nothing. He lost, and he knew he'd lost beyond all hope.
This is where the Democratic fishing expedition will break out in full force. We're going to have a full blown repeat of Florida with hapless local officials peering at punch cards with magnifying glasses while lawyers pester them over every ballot, trying to bring in anything that looks remotely like a Kerry vote and challenging anything that doesn't.
I know Ohio has a very straight forward standard for counting a punch card...2 corners of the chad must be detached to count. But they'll start arguing over what "detached" means. Is that fully detached on 3 sides of the chad? And if that doesn't work, they'll go into federal court to argue that minority districts used punch cards at a higher rate than non-minority districts and since the spoilage rate is higher for punch cards, the standards for including a vote have to be drastically loosened to avoid discriminatory treatment of the minority voters.
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