Howard Bashman has linked to news coverage of developments in Ohio here and here. The picture in Ohio is clearer than it was last night, when I put up my last post. It appears that the number of outstanding provisional ballots is about the same as the current vote difference (both around 135,000). As Dan Lowenstein notes on the election law listserv, it is hard to see this math adding up to a Kerry victory, even assuming he gets a strong majority of the provisional votes. So either there are more provisional ballots out there that are not reported by the Ohio Secretary of State or Democrats have some other theory about how to win Ohio. But it is hard to see ways to shift a vote difference of such a large magnitude.
There’s a broader lesson here as well. Our system of election administration failed last night. It looks like we will avoid a Florida-style debacle, but not because things worked right; it is because the vote margin is not close enough for litigation. We need to make major changes to the way we conduct presidential elections in the United States, beginning with a national registration and voter identification process, and an end to our use of partisan election officials. (More on that here.)
There’s a good chance that the Bush-Kerry story ends very soon. It would be a mistake if the national media turned their attention away from the serious problems with our election system until just before the 2008 election.