Well, the polls are in and the closest race is? Florida!! That might be premature, but I think we're about to see another round of stupid nonsense this year. Whichever candidate wins it outright will probably see the result contested by their opponent. And we probably are going to get to spend another month waiting for the result and looking like a bunch of idiots to the rest of the world.

Anyone in favor of a Constitutional Ammendment against recounts??

EDIT: Changed the name of the thread -- looks like its OHIO and not Florida where the messy side of things is rearing its ugly head.

If it will happen again, it will be most embarassing...image wise.

Regardless of who wins, the election process in the USA needs to build a better image. If the recounting has been allowed in 2000, the Democrats only wanted to recount in counties of Florida that they won. The Republican Party made the case that the original count should stand, so they didn't insist on recounting the rest of Florida. For some reason, that left the Republican Party with the reputation of having cheated the election process and made the Supreme Court look bad for throwing out the demand for a recount.

In a closely contested Missouri, a very liberal Federal Judge ordered poll location to remain open well past the hour it was supposed to close. That was the only voting location afforded such a priveledge and it was in area where there were a lot more Democrats than Republicans.

We saw infamous the doublevoting and numerous attempts to sway the election one way or the other.

This year, we're seeing numerous attempts to ensure a fair counting of votes. Numerous of those attempts have been challenged in court for various reasons. Florida and Ohio is being watched like a hawk by both sides for evidence of cheating or doublevoting.

People from states that are completely wrapped up by the Democrats are encouraging residents that have summer homes elsewhere to vote there instead, especially in Florida and Ohio.

Hmmm, seems to me that both sides are going out of their way to ensure that we see plenty of fiascos this go around.

Dont care what happens, Kerrys gonna be a sore loserman in any case.

My quandry at this point is: Why Ohio? Of the states that they could have picked on, this is the least likely to turn from straw into gold for them. They're not likely to pull it off. Conversely, Wisconson, Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire and Iowa are really close. Consider the count as of this moment (Close States):
Nevada Bush leads by 20,000
New Hampshire Kerry leads by 10,000
Wisconson Kerry leads by 14,000
New Mexico Bush leads by 11,000
Nevada Bush leads by 20,000
***OHIO Bush leads by 136,000

Logic says, their chasing the wrong state.

Because Ohio has had some voting machine malfunctions and other discrepancies. Besides it has the most electoral college votes of those mentioned.

You gotta admit, compared to the others I listed, Ohio seems like a longshot for the Democrats to win.

In truth, you just don't have a situation like you did in Florida in 2000 where the end result was a difference of a little over 500 votes. All of those totals are 10,000+.

BBC World just said that there are 175000 provincial ballots in Ohio that haven't been counted yet.

Most likely Kerry will wait until the amount of votes not counted is less than the gap. After that I think he'll concede defeat.

EDIT: Another source said that there's still 250000 votes not counted and the gap is 106221 votes.

I already explained the about those votes in another thread, so I'll just quote myself:

Originally Posted by godofthunder9010

"Ensure that every vote is counted!" The problem is, we're talking about Provisional Votes here. What that means is that somebody showed up in the wrong voting location (and they definitely had every opportunity of knowing in advance where they were supposed to show up to vote), and voting despite no sure verification of them being registered to vote ... or even having any right to vote at all. What does all that mean? Potentially, we're talking about votes cast by Superman, Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse by people who are simply in it for a laugh. We're also talking about a lot of people who honestly didn't know where they were supposed to be that just showed up and voted. Many likely forgot to register to vote. Some may not even be citizens of the United States. On top of that, we're talking about a very high likelihood of a large portion of them being fraudulent double-votings -- the person already showed up and voted where they were supposed to. So Provisional Votes are highly questionable. On top of all the uncertainties, the number of provisional ballots is 250,000 maximum. Kerry trails by 140,000 and would have to make an absolute killing in the provisional ballots to win Ohio.

We're not talking about your ordinary uncounted votes. We're talking about votes that will be full of uncountable votes.

The other problem is that there is an extremely low likelihood that Kerry, after being dominated in the regular vote, would be able to guarantee 4/5ths of those Provisional Votes are for him and not Bush ... and that would be IF they all turned out to be valid. The likelihood of Ohio landing in Kerry's column ... its just really really unlikely at this point.

Then again, if they hire enough lawyers and rape the democratic process to sufficient degree, who knows how it all turns out.

Current Totals For Ohio: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5651972/
George W. Bush (REP) 2,794,346======= 51%
John F. Kerry (DEM) 2,658,125 =========49%

Subtract the two and you get a little over 136,000.
The Ohio Secretary of State said there are approximately 179,000 Provisional Ballots to be counted. That means that Kerry would have to win almost all of them.

Listening to BBC World and they just said that Kerry is going to publicly concede defeat in an hour and a half and bow out at least somewhat gracefully. It appears he has already called Bush and congratulated him.