What it all comes down to in Ohio looks like SOS Jon Husted, Counting Absentee and Provisional Ballots?

I used to work for the Franklin County BOE as a Poll Worker, then Precinct Judge; i was told I couldn't work anymore because I questioned what to do about 'Citizen voters and Proof of Proper IDs,  and just from my  8 years of experience working; Absentee and Provisional ballots where normally only counted when it was a close call, that is why I don't trust early voting....just saying~

‘If it’s close in Ohio, we could be waiting two weeks until we know.’

SK: What other issues are you watching, aside from Sandy?

RH: Sandy is the top of the list. After that, I’m looking at Ohio and its provisional ballots. They now have a rule that they can’t start counting provisional ballots until November 17. If it’s a close election we could be waiting a few weeks for Ohio’s results. The identity of the president could hang in the balance.

A new wild card this year is the secretary of state sent out absentee ballot applications to everyone in the state. Anyone who asked for an absentee ballot, but hasn’t returned one, if they go to the polls, they will have to cast a provisional ballot. This could add thousands of people, casting provisional ballots which won’t be counted until November 17.

SK: How likely do you see a situation like that being in Ohio?

RH: It all depends on the margin. If it’s within a point, then I think we won’t have a definitive result. If the spread is wider, then even with the provisional ballots, it may be enough for one candidate to claim victory. Or, it could well not come down to Ohio. We just don’t know because the polls are all over the place. It’s certainly a lot closer than you want it be from the point of view of an election administrator.

The election administrator’s prayer is, “Lord, let it not be close.” 

Eleventh-Hour GOP Voter Suppression Could Swing Ohio

Cleveland—Ohio GOP Secretary of State Jon Husted has become an infamous figure for aggressively limiting early voting hours and opportunities to cast and count a ballot in the Buckeye State.

Once again Husted is playing the voter suppression card, this time at the eleventh hour, in a controversial new directive concerning provisional ballots. In an order to election officials on Friday night, Husted shifted the burden of correctly filling out a provisional ballot from the poll worker to the voter, specifically pertaining to the recording of a voter’s form of ID, which was previously the poll worker’s responsibility. Any provisional ballot with incorrect information will not be counted, Husted maintains.

Moritz College of Law at OSU Election Law @ Moritz

Voter ID Confusion

Nov. 6 (1:27 PM) - Scattered reports indicate occasional confusion about the acceptable forms of voter ID. One report out of Pennsylvania suggests that not all poll workers are aware of, or following, the proper rules, in light of earlier litigation invalidating the commonwealth's new voter ID law for this election. Anecdotal reports to Election Law @ Moritz suggest that on occasion today poll workers in Ohio also have misunderstood Ohio's voter ID law.

Delays in Military Ballots

Nov. 6 (11:45 AM) - According to this report, several Republican Senators are concerned that some military voters had not received their ballots as of yesterday. Although the actual extent of this problem is unknown, it is part of an ongoing effort to improve the delivery of absentee ballots to these voters. [Read More]

Ohio Tabulating Software Lawsuit

Nov. 6 (11:08 AM) - This morning a federal district court conducted a hearing on yesterday's motion in Fitrakis v. Husted, seeking a temporary restraining order to prohibit use of Ohio's software tabulating software. [Read More]

Thousands of Ohio voters have been falsely notified that they are not registered to vote due to a database error in Ohio’s voter rolls. An Ohio voter advocacy group alerted Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) to this major system problem on October 30. But instead of fixing it, Husted issued a directive instructing local boards to use the same flawed search method to count provisional ballots after Election Day.

Ohio’s computer search of the voter registration database will only find exact matches, meaning that voters could come up as unregistered due to typos, abbreviations, or partial entries. This flawed search mechanism missed huge numbers of registered voters in Franklin and Cuyahoga Counties, incorrectly rejecting 33,000 requests for absentee ballots. These two counties corrected the error, but thousands of others may have slipped through the cracks in the rest of the state. These voters were told they are not registered to vote and may be forced to use provisional ballots at the polls.

But if they do decide to file provisional ballots, along with a growing number of other legal voters in the state, the very same search method could disenfranchise their vote entirely. Husted has ignored warnings that the system is missing large numbers of registered voters. As the Northeast Ohio Voter Advocates, who first discovered the problem, explain:

Worse yet, Sec. Husted last night released a Directive with a proposed search method for Boards of Elections to verify registration status on provisional ballots. Yet Sec. Husted’s latest recommendations for search are entirely inadequate, likely to miss thousands of voters because of mis-spelling of names, variation in form of ID, failure to use all available tools for a reasonable search and other reasons. Once again, our warnings and suggestions, sent this morning, have gone unanswered. Unless this inadequacy is corrected, several thousand provisional ballots could be wrongfully rejected as “not registered.” If the election is close, this could be a source of endless legal battles.  MORE AT SOURCE