Redstate

Which one's the good guy?

Hackett called the President an SOB. Schmidt is the Republican. YMMV.

If the good guy wins, it's clearly a microcosm of the nation and a taste of what's to come in future elections.

If the other guy wins...anomaly.

save time for later

Clermont County (Schmidt's home county) just posted their first update of the night:

http://www.clermontelections.org/default.php?section=results&topic=curr
ent

Hamilton County (home of Cincinnati) normally has their updates at:

http://www.hamilton-co.org/boe/  However, that site seems to be down tonight.

Makes "adjustment" easier.

http://www.wcpo.com/news/2005/local/08/02/election_results.html

Though their "live" results went without any update for an hour

Cincinnati's ABC affiliate (WCPO) is currently showing a 286 vote lead for Hackett with 56 of 783 precincts reporting:

http://www.wcpo.com/news/2005/local/08/02/election_results.html

If Schmidt wins as expected are there any predictions on how many nanoseconds it'll be before the usual suspects start claiming the election was stolen?

Swing State project already has told their folks that if it is 'close' it is inherently corrupt.

but I assume the "moral victory" spin will be more common, given how heavily Republican this district normally votes.

It is important to remember where the returns are coming from.  Hackett should do well in Hamilton County (city of Cincinnati) but Schmidt should do very well in her home county Claremont and in Warren County.

I believe OH-2 only has suburban Hamilton county.

parts of Hamilton, Warren, Clermont, Brown, Adams, Scott and Pike counties, per Wikipedia

Yeah, when Clermont County comes in, Schmidt should zoom ahead.

Where are you getting the numbers?

At what point does this defecit start to become trouble?

http://www.channelcincinnati.com/politics/4800140/detail.html

41% 305 precincts in..unless Claremont is very heavy late she's in real trouble..

Clermont County doesn't go big for Schmidt

0% reporting in Clermont according to the CE

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2005/08/02/2cong_results.swf

WCPO site




Swingstate--Lefty site

She had 60% of the vote in the early balloting. That should bring some heavy totals to her column as soon as they start to report.

but since precinct tallies are not random samples, it could swing significantly either way.  Depending on how much individual precincts skew, I'd say anywhere between 70% reporting to 95% reporting will be accurate to within 1% of the final tally.

Hmm, I sound a little confusing.  What I mean is, it's still to early to extrapolate, but it's not looking good for Schmidt.

When I made my post, Dales hadn't added the all-important D and R labels yet.  Plus I don't live anywhere near Ohio.

She's about to take the lead with the Claremont votes:

http://www.clermontelections.org/default.php?section=results&topic=curr
ent

...but still depressing.

this is set up right now for a stuffed chad box in Warren County..

Seems a low enough turnout and close enough results for the post-vote fraud claims to really roll in.  Interesting if both the Clermont and Hamilton Co. reports are dribbling in. That sets up claims for both sides.

All in all, Hackett runs again next year either way, and Schmidt has a big primary fight ahead as well.

Seems improbable for Schmidt to reach 10+ win if these are the 1/2way totals. She's vulnerable again next go round even winning this time.

580 precincts of 753 reporting

JEAN SCHMIDT    45,134    52%   

PAUL HACKETT    42,342    48%   

I hope she's not fat, but she can start singing.

sure the Dems threw the moderate label and dug for votes using Mr. Union Voter Max Cleland but either you had a sleeping and disinterested base or Mrs. Schmidt was really not a very good candidate.

begins in... 5...4...3...

No Schmidt sightings yet.  The mood is "anxious."

This is shaping up to be a horrid result for the Ohio GOP.

Hamilton County went for Schmidt by 1,000 votes. It won't be 55-45, but it won't be seriously contested, either.

Even if they win?  I really don't know much about what the cost of a much-too-close victory is.  

Sometimes you need a wake up call, and the Ohio GOP is certainly in need of one.  

Schmidt is the nativist who supports ethonol-subsidies, the recent Energy bill, and the Medicare prescription drug benefit.

Hackett is the NRA-member, attorney, and Iraq war veteran who supports... ummm... ummm.... You try reading his website and figuring out if he actually his positions on things. It is one of the most vacuous I've ever seen for a congressional candidate in terms of actual what he supports. Each "on the issues" page is just a list of "problems" like outsourcing without really any idea of what he will do to "fix" these "problems."

It looks like a coin toss to me and, judging from the returns, the people of Ohio too.

Ohio produces another nail biter!  Gotta change that!  

Just over half reporting -- she could pick up a decent cuishon, but yeah not 55-45

I lived in the district for 20 years and it's very Republican.  I believe that President Bush and Rob Portman scored 30-40 point wins last year.  I'm not sure if it is the state coin scandal or just a bad candidate, but an election this close, in this district is a warning shot over the bow of the state GOP.

This is a 70-30 district with a star (Portman), but without a star it is still a 60-40 district.

She'll win, but apparently the Hamilton County GOP needs to take back the initiative. Pat DeWine got spanked for various reasons, so the city machine will have to find a better candidate next fall. The national party should not have to worry about this race, and Hackett has another year and a half to campaign.

...But will the money be there?  It's not like MyDD, Kos, and Atrios can raise $400k for every candidate.

Wake up call?  They need to be shaken vigorously!

Given how the House works, the vote for the Speaker at the start of the session is worth as much as all the other votes put together.

I may think Hastert and DeLay spend too much, but if the choice is one or the other, I'll take them over Pelosi and Hoyer any day.

The reality is there is a time and a place to send a message - but this ain't it...

Voting to organize is all that matters in the House...  Plus, there is no need to create a monster by helping people like Hackett...  This guy is a nut as are his KosKids supporters, but he is going to be heard from again I'm afraid...

He'll have an advantage of running against the whole state machine next fall, and Schmidt was barely involved in that (as a rep.), but he won't need all that much money.

Plus, the GOP will have to plug holes and answer those charges all over the place, and they are not gonna want to spend much here anyway.

Schmidt has family money, but if the state party gets Blackwell at the top, there will be an urge to find new faces all over, and the primaries will show that.

A big win here had her sailing, now she faces at least 2 more contests.

money is no object...

The NRA endorsed Schmidt.

Has the brief summary at Redhot. A GOP win, and not much else.

While it shouldn't have been this close -- it is hardly a predestined doom and cloom for 2006.

Don't forget Bob Beauprez won CO-7 by 121 votes in 2002 and then won handily in 2004.  

Does Ohio have one of these laws? Does every state? I'm not quite sure how it works

If so, anybody now what the margin for triggering it is?

Yes, I should have been more clear.  I was trying to give people an idea where Hamilton County was and that the big urban counties vote heavily D.

If the margin of victory of the nominee, candidate, or issue is less than one-half of one percent of the vote, section 3515.011 of the Revised Code triggers an automatic recount in all county, municipal, and district elections. An even slimmer margin --one-fourth of one percent--triggers an automatic recount in a statewide election.

http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/ebook/part5/procedures_recount01.html

Currently at 0.88%.

What's the sound of a hushed zoom?

on the site reporting... (or at least the local news)

Anyone care to hazard a guess as to why it's taking Clermont County so long to close the books on their remaining 91 precincts?

I can hear the cries of "vote fixing" coming from the Kos Kiddies as I type...

Statistically speaking, Hackett would need to win about 54% of the remaining vote in what appears to be Schmidt's strongest county.  In other words, the results outstanding would have to be the near inverse of what the previous 100 precincts show - not entirely likely, but stranger things have been known to happen.  Just ask Governor Dino Rossi.

Thanks for the updates, all.

Apparently the machines broke and they're doing a hand count.

The rumor at MyDD is that the last group of ballots in Clermont is being handcounted because humidity is causing them to stick in voting machines.  

Yea, the Kos's are saying voter fraud, and MyDD is telling people to find anything you can find about ways election fraud could have happened. It's funny reading these kid's conspiracies. GO SCHMIDT!

Diebold and Karl Rove are behind this.

Bwwwwaaaaaaahahahahahahahaha!

Seriously, isn't it a bit of a disgrace that we can put people into space and (Lord willing) return them safely but we cannot seem to perfect the simple act of printing, casting and accurately tabulating a vote?

A cynic would suggest that we're not really all that interested in cleaning up the process.  But that's just cynics, right?

Cheers.

puts someone into space, let me know :)

I'm waiting for one to put a scheme together where Reagan "stole" the election from Mondale.  Yet thinking of crackpot conspiracy theories sure beats facing the reality that you control 0 of the 3 branches of government.

I guess a hand count means Diebold is uninvolved?

I grew up in this district and have plenty of ties still there, and if Clermont is messing this up, Hackett will be able to move into BOE headquarters in Batavia (county seat) for the next year and a half.

Given it's hand counting, the fraud allegations will disappear soon (presuming they don't get into chad controversy), but every machine in every precinct will be subject to review.

This is embarrassing for the GOP. I would not be surprised to see some flack aimed at Blackwell again, as sec. of state, but that should boomerang since he'll be able to bang heads amongst the locals to clean up quick and produce accurate results - for him, it's the 2004 experience writ very small.

For the Cincinnati GOP machine - c'mon guys - get it in gear.

new MSM lexicon for GOP cheating.

Isn't it ironic that Nixon gets the Kennedy/Nixon stolen from out under him, and the Democrats still assume that we steal elections when they have nothing close to real proof.

the </sarcasm&gt tag.

In any case, it appears to be all over - but for the wailing and gnashing of teeth on Kos, that is.  Still, an ugly win is still a win.  Having survived a House election where my guy lost by 2 votes (that's right, 2 votes out of about 150k cast), I know that all too well.

Cheers!

Yelling cheater is always easier than putting in the necessary work to rebuild your party -- of course Dems wish they had someone with Goldwater's spine.

democrat loses.  AT this point it is going to turn into the boy that cried wolf if they aren't careful.

The facts are that there is always a loser in an election, and sometimes that loser is the guy you like-get over it and try harder next time.

go to 2004 and look at Washington state.  If anyone wants to talk about stolen elections it would be that one.

We've got Diebold, yes we do!

We've got Diebold, how 'bout you?!

Evil Rovian laugh...

Very nice job on keeping the updates current and informative.  Well done.

There's no silver medal for Hatchett here. Still, I must take exception to trevino's RedHot post, in part.

Of course, this is a unique situation-- Hackett was a solid candidate, Schmidt didn't garner much enthusiasm, and the funding raised here would never have been possible were it not an isolated summer election.  I would not expect this sort of action in Republican safe districts across the nation in 2006.

Still, (and despite whatever chiding this may provoke from trevino) it seems ridiculous to deny that this election has shown the weakness of the GOP in Ohio, if not on a national level.  And even a full year after the presidential election, it still seems a little cliche to point out how important one state  can be in a national election.  

The problem with Washington was that whatever happend there was carried out UNDER a Republican -- how sickening is that? Let's hope they find a primary challenge for Rino SoS Sam Reed

Living here in Cook county for 5 years +, the past few elections we've (the county board using punch card machines) "lost" more votes than the entire voting population of several states. I think the count in 2000 was 220,000 lost votes, and only slightly better in 2004.

Good thing there aren't any close races here. Then again, we'd never know.

FROM KOS:

"New strategy: We rig the elections. We win. We save america and the world before its too late and nuclear war occurs....

Yeah its unethical. But sometimes you have to do the thing thats unethical to do the RIGHT thing. And winning, and saving America is the right hting. There is NO WAY to win without rigging.

We have to save America.

Who's with me?"

That's scary, but I think it's something we may see soon. No elections were actually stolen except the '60 Presidential, and that was by Kennedy, but I do think that Democrats will soon try to violate election law and console themselves with the propaganda that it was done to them. We have to be on the look out for Dems like this.

edge voting technology.  They hand us a pencil, ballot and we go into this booth, and we make a checkmark right next to the candidate's name.  Then we hand it to one of the little old ladies as we leave, and at some point the little old ladies get together and start counting.

I am pretty sure this technology is typical for most NH towns-maybe somebody who lives in the larger cities (by NH standards of course) or richer towns can let us know.

I have actually come to trust the little old ladies more than voting machines-at least I won't get a pregnant chad or a hanging chad.

If the ever there was a perfect storm it was here and yet he didn't win.  When is it going to get better?

The Ohio GOP has had a rough year but I fail to see how this carries forward.  How many open seats with bitter primaries, divided loyalties, and a veteran acting like a moderate as an opponent are they going to get?

Personality and passion matter, the GOP didn't have it in this one, but they will in 2006 I bet.

It'd be nice to have an election go completely smoothly for once, but the borderline psychotic displays we get from dKos and the outer environs of Moonbatia every time a voting machine hiccups are better for the Republican Party than anything campaign cash could buy.

My pleasure.

They can scream civil rights all they want but the bottom line is that the ID laws for voters move their chances of pulling a rigged election below the Mendoza line.

There will ALWAYS be certain districts that will vote over 100% of registered voters or even residents and no one in the MSM will bat an eye but to pull off a real rigging they would need provisional voting out the wazoo, claim a quick victory before recounts can start and pressure the GOP to not push things.

Kevin - Agreed that this is about as bad a win as the GOP can get. But, is Blackwell the favorite for the governor's primary? He strikes me as the only personality who can cleanse the palate of the electorate and retain anything near the control the GOP has had for the past 10-20 years. The machine seems fine, but the folks steering seem lost.

Comments please?!?!?

We do have to remember that anything can happen in special elections. I think there were four major strikes against Schmidt.

1. Special Election with turnout lower than usual.
   
   
   
2. An A-Team opponent from the dems with a veteran from a war currently going on
   
   
   
3. Bob Taft and his crew
   
   
   
4. Schmidt's tax votes.
   
   
   
5. A tough grueling primary with 3 other major candidates in Brinkman, DeWine, and McEwen.

I think partisanship, and maybe NRA/Right to Life saved her.

rather than complaining that the other side is paranoid over non-transparent elections....

seeing that your party does control all the branches of the federal goverment, why doesnt your party just pass legislation which makes the elections transperant.

What do you say we start with the Republican stronghold of Philadelphia (Kerry by 61%), eh?

I am one of those "kossacks" who thinks that the election irregularities in Clermont county are not a fluke. Before you write me off as a lunatic, please just look at the following situation;

1. The FBI investigated allegations of fraud made by some involved in the vote counting process in this county in 2004. http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050209/NEWS01/5020904
15/

2. There were also irregularities in this county in the GOP primary this year, favoring Schmidt. From the Enquirer: "When all seven counties had reported their votes to the Hamilton County Board of Elections Tuesday night, Schmidt led McEwen by 705 votes. But when Hamilton County Elections Director John Williams came to work Wednesday morning, he found a second corrected version of Clermont County's final results on his fax machine.

The new totals increased Schmidt's lead to 2,667 votes.Williams said Clermont County officials explained to him that one of their workers accidentally marked an earlier report with the word "final'' and sent it to the Hamilton County board, where all the county reports were being collected." http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050616/NEWS01/5061603
35/1077/news01

3. The "ballot sticking" explanation may indeed be a true one; however, it does sound fishy, you have to admit. You have to ask, why was this the only county with this problem, and why did the problem only materialize halfway through the vote counting process?
   
   
4. Why did the live-updating vote counting website go down immediately before the new results were posted?

You may not think that anything fraudulent happened, but I think it's understandable that there's suspicion. Sorry for the long post, I just wanted to make clear that just because we yell "fraud" doesn't mean it's not there. I think we all agree that fraud does occur, in some places; for some reason, this one county has had three serious irregularities in the last year. I think it's obvious there's a possibility that a county in which there are 3 irregularities in the space of a year is doing something wrong. Let's be reasonable.

It's just that boy again. Ignore him.