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If Tuesday's Vote is Close, Get Ready for a Slow Count
If the presidential results are close, the number of yet-to-be-counted ballots may be larger than the spread between
candidates in swing states.
By Kath Dopp, AlterNet
November 1, 2008
If the vote count is close on Tuesday night, there's a good chance Americans will become as familiar with a special kind
of voting - known as a provisional ballot - as they were with hanging chads in Florida in the aftermath of Florida's
disputed 2000 presidential election.
That is because in several battle ground states the number of provisional and uncounted mail-in ballots - which have to
be checked one by one after Election Day to validate the voter's registration information before counting - plus the
number of uncounted mail-in ballots are likely to exceed the margins of victory.
In other words, if it is a close vote, you can expect Republican and Democratic Party lawyers to start fighting over the
state-by-state and county-by-county rules concerning provisional ballot eligibility. Provisional ballots were created by
Congress after the 2000 election, but each state was given the leeway to implement its own rules for accepting or
rejection these ballots.
In states like Colorado and Florida where strict matching rules have been used to purge voters from electronic voter
registration rolls, and in states like Indiana and Ohio where new stricter voter identification laws have been
implemented, more eligible voters than ever before will cast provisional ballots that are not counted on Election Night.
Read the entire article here: If Tuesday's Vote is Close, Get Ready for a Slow Count
For a list of sources for the Alternet article: http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/ --
Kathy Dopp
The material expressed herein is the informed
product of the author's fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a Mathematician, Expert in election audit
mathematics and procedures; in exit poll discrepancy analysis; and can be reached at
P.O. Box 680192 Park City, UT 84068 phone 435-658-4657
http://utahcountvotes.org http://electionmathematics.org http://electionarchive.org http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/
How to Audit Election Outcome Accuracy
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/VoteCountAuditBillRequest.pdf