Status of provisional/absentee vote counts in Ohio

When will we know the results? Does anyone know where we can see the results?

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/110034202128630.xml

Saturday, November 13, 2004
Scott Hiaasen
Plain Dealer Reporter

Elections boards around Ohio may begin counting provisional ballots as early as today as they prepare to verify their official results from the Nov. 2 election.

After receiving the last overseas absentee ballots Friday night, local election officials must begin the tedious business of scouring every precinct for every ballot and making sure the number of voters who signed in at the polls matches the number of votes.

"If the numbers are off, we have to figure out what happened," said Paula Hicks-Hudson, the elections director in Lucas County.

Usually, this work goes unnoticed. But this year's canvassing is under increased scrutiny in Cuyahoga and other counties because the presidential contest, decided in Ohio, was so close: Unofficial totals show that President Bush defeated Democrat John Kerry by 136,000 votes, although 155,000 provisional ballots must still be reviewed.

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This verification takes time; officials in many of Ohio's large counties don't expect the work to be finished before the middle of next week. Only then will they begin recounting the rest of the ballots cast, a process that could take until the end of the month in some counties.

By Friday afternoon, fewer than 6,000 of the nearly 25,000 provisional ballots in Cuyahoga County had been reviewed, elections director Michael Vu said. So far, about two-thirds of those votes have been deemed legitimate, but those numbers could change.

In Summit County, elections officials expect to begin recounting the ballots on Tuesday. Director Bryan Williams said his staff has found that about 10 percent of the 5,932 provisional ballots in the county are invalid.

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for the info. I guess I'm impatient.

...too late to include the votes? This is how I read this article. They were supposed to have 10 days to verify these ballot and yet one precinct is only 1/4 of the way through. And there will have to be a court challenge because of the after-the -fact change about DOB.

Seems to me as if the GOP is attempting to squeeze out every Dem vote they can. They must really be sweating over the recount.

Any word on the miltary vote? Surely that wont have to go through the same laborious validation process.