Sandusky Co's 56% for Bush is up 2% from 2000, essentially typical for the smaller counties in Ohio. Therefore, every indication is that, if there was a double count, it was probably a "non-biased" one. If both sides go down 10 percent, then Bush loses about 390 votes from his lead. This is exactly what these county boards are supposed to be doing right now...comparing votes counted to votes cast. BTW, the website I saw said that the county elections director was a DEM, the assistant was REPUB. You know, people make mistakes, and this doesn't look very much like a plot on either side.
What I haven't seen on here is that two counties have actually posted their official results (post overseas and post provisionals). There are a couple of interesting points about the data:
The total increase in votes is slightly larger than the number of provisionals, so the absentees are basically filling in for the disqualified provisionals. These were both smaller counties which have been having higher provisional qualification rates.
Secondly, Guess What! Bush carried the additonal votes in both counties. Gee, Republicans vote by provisional also (something some people have a hard time understanding). No Kerry 80 percent margin. However, Bush is running about 4.5% behind his voting day total in the provsionals. This is very consistent with what we've seen across the country. So, say Kerry gets a net gain of seven percent (that's what this would work out to) of, say 175,000 total valid provisional ballots plus valid overseas ballots. That works out to be 12,250. If you subtract 390 for the Sandusky error (if there really is an error), you get Bush's margin at 132,600 - 12,250 - 390 = 119,960. You can only get Bush losing 1,000 votes in Sandusky if you believe that, absent the error, Bush's margin did not increase over 2000. In any event, we can spin theories all we want, but the facts are that Kerry is not getting anywhere close to 80 percent of 100% qualified provisional ballots.
Here's another new set of returns: Brown County:
Before
Bush 12,480
Kerry 7058
Provisionals listed 326
Provisionals + absentees added 249
After
Bush 12,647
Kerry 7,140
NO 100 % qualification
NO 80 percent Kerry margin
OMG. Too much math for me. When I was a little girl in 2nd grade my dad used to pound on the table till I got 2+2=4...I still heard him pounding the table when I read your post! :(