Tuesday night saw two very, very close elections.  In a special election in a deep red U.S. House district in Ohio, the Democrat is currently trailing by about 1,500 votes before provisional and the remaining absentee ballots are counted.  In the Republican primary for Governor, Secretary of State (Spawn of Satan) Kris Kobach is leading current Governor Jeff Colyer (who only recently replaced Sam Brownback as governor) by approximately 110 votes as mistakes in the numbers on the Secretary of State’s website are being corrected.

What comes next in both states is slightly different as the process of counting the votes is governed by state law.  In both states, the current count does not include provisional votes — those cast by voters whose names were not on the precinct roll or who lacked proper ID — and late arriving absentee votes (as long as postmarked before the election).  Kansas has a shorter time-frame for these issues.  In Kansas, all absentee votes must arrive by the Friday after the primary and the counties will begin their official canvass — which includes counting all valid provisional and absentee votes this upcoming week (August 13-16).  In Ohio, those who cast provisional ballots have until seven days after the primary (August 14) to submit supporting documentation (e.g., show up with valid ID) to their local election authority and any absentee ballot received by ten days after the primary (August 17) counts with the canvass beginning on the 18th.

Because Ohio has such a long time for absentee ballots to arrive, we still don’t know how many ballots we are dealing with in Ohio.  We know that there are around 3,000 provisional ballots.  We also know that there are over 5,000 people who applied for absentee ballots who did not return them by election day.  How many of those 5,000 absentee ballots are in the mail is the unanswered question.  Generally speaking, provisional ballots tend to lean Democratic but absentee ballots are more of a mixed bag.  In Kansas, there were approximately 9,000 provisional ballots and current estimates are that around 6,000 of those provisional ballots are for the Republican primary.  (As should not be surprising, about 3,500 of the 9,000 are in Sedgewick County — Wichita — and Johnson County — affluent suburban Kansas City with another 1,400 in Douglas — Lawrence/University of Kansas — and Shawnee — the state capitol of Topeka and Wyandotte — less affluent Kansas City suburbs.  The next largest county has about 200 provisional ballots).  I have not seen any count of absentee ballots. Continue Reading...