It Ain't Over Til It's Over... by MacTed. Submitted on 2004-11-04
17:40:18

Ted Thibodeau Jr says:

The following arrived via a mailing list, coming from the Ohio Secretary of State's office...

A friend of mine got off the phone with the office of the Ohio Secretary of State and was told the following:

Kerry's concession has no legal bearing on who wins the election.

Ohio has been using and counting provisional ballots the exact same way for the past 10 elections.

Ohio and Federal law dictate that the state will wait 10 days and then begin counting the provisional ballots.

All valid provisional ballots will be counted.

The winner of the state of Ohio shall not be considered official until such time as all provisional ballots have been counted.

If Kerry is found to win Ohio, regardless of his public concession, he will win the election.

The woman she spoke with asked that people post this
information far and wide because, for whatever reason, the media aren't reporting it.

There remain a couple of questions though. As of yesterday, Secretary of State Blackwell said there were about 175,000 provisional ballots, but that didn't include about 10 counties that hadn't turned theirs in yet. Did those counties include huge democratic stronghold and highly populated Cuyahuga county, that contains Cleveland?

J. Kenneth Blackwell
Ohio Secretary of State
180 E. Broad St. 16th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
General Telephone Number (Toll Free): 1-877-767-6446
General Telephone Number (Local): 1-614- 466-2655
Elections questions or comments:
email:
election@sos.state.oh.us

call: 614-466-2585


In 2000 (Gore vs. Bush), 80% of provisional ballots were found to be valid for counting. If the same holds true this year, that's at least 140,000 to count -- and note that there were 10 more counties to submit their ballots to the stack of 175,000.

There are also an unknown number of absentee ballots.
The current Bush margin of 'victory' is 136,483. Kerry would thus need at least 136,484 + 50% of any remaining valid ballots. (If the final margin of victory is 0.25% or less, an automatic recount will be triggered, before the final victory is awarded.)
That's more than 90% of the valid provisional ballots received as of yesterday -- but the net percentage Kerry needs will be lower, depending on how large the complete stack really is.

Separately, we have Florida, which had approximately 1.5 Million provisional and absentee ballots to be dealt with -- and the margin of Bush's victory there is 377,206, a *much* smaller percentage of the outstanding votes.... Of course, in Florida, it depends on whether judges extended the legal deadline of Noon today, and I don't know what the results of those court cases were/are -- I can't find useful coverage online.

In either case -- Kerry's concession speech is not legally binding -- if the final count has Kerry winning Ohio or Florida, he will get those Electoral Votes, and the Presidency.