Counting of the Ohio provisional ballots is expected to begin on Saturday, with Kerry supporters continuing to have hopes of a miracle. Looking at the numbers, we would need some unexpected breaks. The
LA Times looked at the number of Kerry votes which would be needed:
If all provisional votes are deemed valid, Kerry would need 88% of them to overcome Bush's margin of victory in Ohio, assuming the remaining overseas absentee ballots were split evenly.
But many provisional ballots will probably be tossed out. In past elections, about 10% were judged as not coming from legitimately registered voters. What's more, Blackwell ruled before the election that provisional ballots had to be cast in the correct precinct, and that any cast at the wrong polling place would not be counted.
If 10% of the provisional ballots were rejected, Kerry would need to get 97.6% of those remaining to overcome Bush's lead.
Ironically, our hopes rest partially on the efficiency and ruthlessness of the GOP challengers as we must hope that they challenged unusually high numbers of legitimate voters, and that they successfully selected Kerry voters to challenge. Finding further irregularities, such as the those in Franklin County which gave significantly extra votes to Bush, could also affect the outcome. Our chances would improve further if Kerry should do better than expected among the overseas absentee ballots.
These number suggest that it is very unlikely that Kerry could pick up the necessary votes to carry Ohio. Such an event would be as unprecedented as coming back from being down three games against the Yankees.