is the ohio count still important?

[acroyear]

(the question's come up in a number of threads)

actually yes it is.

the constitution makes no provisions for votes to someone who's dropped out of the race.  One becomes president by either 1) achieving more than half the electorial college, or 2) a vote in the House should no single person achieve half.

So it comes down to Ohio (and kinda the other two states still open, but thier votes collectively won't make up enough for Ohio to not be the decider), and the specifics of the law that controls its election board.

Update: If Ohio law allows the board to recognize the concession, then they can likely declare Bush the winner of the state (and by extension, the country) immediately. -- This is appearantly unlikely, according to one reader, so the second case applies: the vote in 11 days continues as required by Ohio law.

If Ohio law requires that "all votes declared legitimate be counted" (mind you, "legitimate" is a word that the Ohio Sec of State couldn't seem to actually say, nor could he say "valid"), then the provisional count must go on in 11 days as described in Ohio's law, according to the Sec of State last night (on both CNN and CBS, the two networks that didn't declare Ohio for Bush last night).

So, Ohio has to make a decision according to its laws, and no army of lawyers should be allowed to make a difference in that decision.

Comments

[rttgirl.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth...

The Washington Post has listed Ohio as declared for Bush. I haven't been able to confirm if this is conjecture, or if this is based on Ohio law recognizing the concession, though one of the Ohio TV news station's websites says they're still going to count the provisional ballots.

(Eerily enough, all four Ohio news sites linked on the Post have the exact same layout, and only minor changes in content. Because of that, I'm going to keep looking around to see if I can find anything more....)

[thatliardiego.livejournal.com]

Concession speeches are not legally binding.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

and neither is a declaration of a state's result by an american newspaper or media network.

the networks and news sites are still only showing their "projected winners". nothing is final until the electoral boards of the states meet to inform the actual electors of the electoral college AND those people go to DC to cast the final votes theoretically representing their electorate.

(actually, des, do they still actually go to DC to finalize that these days?)

[thatliardiego.livejournal.com]

Yep, and then the results are jointly certified by the House and Senate. Which, as you recall in 2000, had to be done by the president of the Senate. Which was Al Gore.

[rsteachout.livejournal.com]

Every legitimate vote should be counted and certified, not just in Ohio but every state. Only then will we *really* know the actual winner of the election.

I have nothing against certifying the legitimate vote -- it is a *duty* and obligation the states and nation owe to the people. It is the attempt to use legal sophistry use to abuse the system in order to hijack an election that I believe is wrong; and that is what is looked like the parties were preparing to do.