Ohio election officials said Monday that they would begin this week the final count of 155,428 provisional ballots and an unknown number of overseas absentee ballots that were cast in the presidential election.
According to the preliminary tally, which included all domestic absentee ballots, Sen. John F. Kerry lost Ohio by 136,483 votes, Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell said.
Attorneys for the Kerry campaign said Monday that they did not believe the outcome of the Ohio vote -- which gave President Bush the electoral votes needed to win -- could possibly change; they have discouraged speculation that voting irregularities caused Kerry's loss.
Nonetheless, the Ohio count is attracting scrutiny by groups who say the election was tainted and that voting equipment in Ohio, Florida, South Carolina and elsewhere was defective. On Friday, three congressional Democrats asked for a federal investigation.
Since the election, Internet sites and political blogs have buzzed with speculation that the vote was manipulated. "Evidence mounts that the vote may have been hacked," reads the title of one widely circulated Web offering.
Voting machine failures did occur, and long lines in heavily Democratic precincts discouraged some potential voters. Still, a broad range of experts said that the final vote counts in Ohio and other states could not possibly change the outcome.
Among those was Cleveland attorney Mark Griffin, who played a key role in the Kerry campaign's voter protection efforts in that area.
After meeting Monday with Michael Vu, head of the Board of Elections in Ohio's Cuyahoga County, Griffin said: "This is really not about changing the outcome.... It is about making sure every vote counts, particularly people who waited in line three hours."
The 2004 Ohio vote was not nearly as close as the disputed Florida results in 2000.
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.
