Final Ohio Vote Count Assures Bush Victory

What did I tell everybody? All those provisional ballots are in--and the validated ones wouldn't be enough. Even before they start opening the ballots, Ohio election officials now know that even if John Kerry won them all--which is not repeat not a sure thing by a long shot--he wouldn't have enough votes to reverse the election. The number of valid provisional ballots is 121,598 (77 percent of the total, which is on the high end of typical). Bush's margin of victory was 136,483 votes.

Sorry, Cynthia L. Butler, or whoever you are, whatever you are. Even the question of your true identity doesn't matter anymore. Nothing matters anymore.

Blackwell's office said there will be no available breakdown of how many provisionals went to Bush or Kerry. It said the final tally will be inclusive of all votes.

Which may mean that they won't even bother opening them, or if they do, they won't tally up the provisional ballots separately or apart from the votes already tallied. Still, when we do get final certified vote totals on Monday, we can probably work out how many of those provisional ballots really broke Kerry's way. Does anyone want to predict whether Bush's margin will still hold, within five percent or so of the margin's size? Any predictions are welcome.