GOP Could Win Contested House Race in Ohio; Update: Dem Wins

After picking up two seats in Louisiana Saturday, it's shaping up as a fairly decent weekend for the GOP, despite efforts by Democrats to steal another seat, thanks to the corrupt Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.

The results of a tight congressional race in central Ohio were expected late Sunday as election officials finished counting thousands of provisional ballots.

Officials of the Franklin County Board of Elections began processing the 24,000 ballots Saturday in the race between Republican state Sen. Steve Stivers and Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy.

Stivers leads Kilroy by 594 votes out of nearly 290,000 cast in the 15th Congressional District. About 40 percent of the 24,000 provisional ballots came from voters in the district.

The counting of the provisional ballots — issued at polls to people who believe they have been wrongly denied the right to vote — went forward after the Ohio Supreme Court ruled Friday that 1,000 of the ballots in dispute must be thrown out because of voter error.

In a 4-2 decision, the court struck down a directive by Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner saying the votes should be counted.

Justices said Brunner improperly instructed county officials to apply conflicting standards to election law by ruling that the votes should be counted, even though the envelopes failed to comply with legal guidelines set out before Election Day, Nov. 4.

Update: Well, that didn't turn out as hoped.

With all the ballots counted in Ohio's Fifteenth District, Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy has defeated Republican Steve Stivers by 2,311 votes. Kilroy's margin of victory is large enough to avoid an automatic recount.

The final result was delayed until Franklin County officials could count some 24,000 provisional ballots, about 40 percent of which were cast in the Fifteenth District. Stivers had been leading by just under 600 votes before the provisional ballots were counted.

The victory gives Democrats one final pickup of a Republican-held seat. Kilroy will be succeeding retiring Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio).

Thanks to Ace for the link.

By the way, expect more of this magical provisional ballot nonsense in Louisiana's 4th district.

In complete but unofficial results, Fleming received 44,497 votes (48.07%) and Carmouche received 41,141 vote (47.69%). Independent Candidate Chester T. Kelley got 3,245 votes (3.51%) and Independent Candidate Gerard Bowen, Jr. got 675 votes (.73%). These are complete but unofficial results from the Louisiana Secretary of State's office.

In all, there were 92,558 early and machine votes cast in the election. Provisional ballots had not been counted and are not a part of the total.

Carmouche cited the uncounted provisional ballots as one reason he would not concede the race once the results had been announced.

"For me to concede at this point would be foolish. We've spent a lot of money, a lot of effort, a lot of time in this race, and there are provisional ballots that we don't believe have been counted yet because they don't usually count those (immediately after a race). Democrats usually win those by large margins so the fat lady hasn't sung yet in this thing," he said.