Interested in the status of the Ohio vote count? Rich Lowery has a good article at National Review Online. Here's part of it:
The conspiracy theorists focus on Franklin County, home of the heavily Democratic city of Columbus. They allege, among other things, that long lines there on Election Day were a cagey tactic to keep blacks from voting. It just happens that Anthony is chairman of the Franklin County Board of Elections and also chairman of the Franklin County Democratic party. "I am a black man," he told the Columbus Dispatch. "Why would I sit there and disenfranchise voters in my own community?" Good question.
[Jesse] Jackson and others complain that not enough of the roughly 155,000 provisional ballots - ballots cast by voters who might or might not be legitimate registered voters - are being counted. So far, an ample 76 percent of the provisional ballots have been ruled valid, roughly the same rate as in 2000. A provisional ballot isn't counted when the person casting it wasn't really registered to vote, voted in the wrong precinct or - more rarely - voted twice. Ohio's standards for counting provisional ballots are entirely reasonable. Indeed, they are the same as in such liberal strongholds as New York, Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts.
The die-hards also focus on punch-card ballots, which featured prominently in the Florida 2000 controversy and aren't counted if there's an over-vote (i.e., both Bush and Kerry are punched) or an under-vote (i.e., neither is clearly punched). In any election, there is a small percentage of both. Here, Ohio's performance has improved over 2000. Four years ago, out of 4.9 million votes cast, 98,000 were invalid because of over-votes or under-votes. This year, there were more total votes, 5.5 million, but only 93,000 over-votes or under-votes.
It's still possible, believe it or not, that John Kerry could win the election. We'll know by next week. I can't imagine anything, short of another 9/11, that would rock this country more than Ohio finding that John Kerry actually garnered more votes than George Bush. For one thing, all those Hollywood types who moved abroad in the wake of November 2nd would all be coming back again. That prospect alone should be enough to stop the count.
