(The Associated Press circulated the following story by John McCarthy on November 3.)
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Questions over votes and ballots, long lines at the polls, and an invasion of lawyers: One state had it all in this year’s presidential election.
It wasn’t Florida, but Ohio, which lived up to its pre-Election Day billing as the likely center of this year’s political storm.
Another reminder of Florida’s 2000: Lawyers for President Bush began heading to Ohio early Wednesday to join hundreds of Republican lawyers already in place. The Democrats already had thousands of lawyers in Ohio to watch what the Republicans were up to.
The morning after the polls closed, the race between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry remained too close to call. With all precincts reporting, unofficial results found Bush had 2,794,346 votes, or 51 percent, while Kerry had 2,658,125, or 48.5 percent, in unofficial returns.
It was too soon to know how quickly a final outcome would be reached.
“I’m not in the business of projections. I’m in the business of managing a fair election in the state of Ohio,” said Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. “We’ll know how many ballots were cast and tabulated when we know it. Take a deep breath and relax. If it takes two hours, two days or two weeks.”
While Bush appeared to hold the edge, still uncertain was the number of provisional ballots, which are cast when a poll worker cannot find the name of a voter in precinct records.
Bush’s 136,221-vote lead would have easily surpassed the 121,000 provisional ballots that were cast in 2000. But Blackwell, a Republican, said he did not know how many had been cast this year, speculating it was around 175,000.
Elections officials have 10 days to determine the validity of a provisional voter’s registration. After the 10 days, county boards of elections begin counting them.
More than 8 million Ohioans were registered to vote, setting a record over 2000, when 7.5 million voters were registered and 4.8 million of them — 63 percent — went to the polls. This year, 5.4 million Ohioans voted for president.
The importance of Ohio and its 20 electoral votes is reflected in its history. No Republican has won the White House without Ohio and only two Democrats have done so since 1900.
Long lines in wet weather across much of the state kept the polls open late in many areas and waits of more than one hour were not unusual. Ohio law requires the polling place to remain open until the last voter in line at 7:30 p.m. is admitted.
At a precinct in Gambier, home of Kenyon College, election officials said they remained open far after midnight to accommodate voters.
Ohio had been identified for months as among the closest races, with both parties pouring huge amounts of time and resources into the state.
Bush built his Ohio efforts on his strength as a leader and the security of the nation. Kerry pushed hard on the loss of 200,000 jobs in the state in the past four years.
Ohio was under more political scrutiny in the 2004 campaign than in any year since 1976, when Democrat Jimmy Carter pulled out an 11,000-vote victory over Republican President Gerald Ford.
Four years ago, Bush and Democrat Al Gore visited Ohio 24 times. Bush won the state by 3.6 percentage points, much closer than expected when Gore made his last appearance in Ohio on Oct. 4 — more than one month before the election. Bush then also turned his attention elsewhere.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties immediately began planning to ensure that didn’t happen this year.