Ohio in dispute one day after election

COLUMBUS, Ohio - The winner of the US presidential race in the key battleground state of Ohio was in dispute and its top elections officer said a final count might not come in for two weeks.

"What I've told everybody to is to take a deep breath and relax," Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell told a briefing.

He spoke after two of the five US television networks had declared President Bush the winner over Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry in the state where both needed a win to amass the number of electoral votes needed for victory.

Blackwell, a Republican, said it would be impossible to say who won Ohio if the difference between Bush and Kerry in the raw vote total was smaller than the number of outstanding provisional votes -- ballots that were cast pending authentication.

Those provisional ballots will not be counted toward the final election result until 11 days after the election, as state law requires, he said.

With 99 per cent of the state's precincts counted Bush was leading Kerry by 134,019, according to totals provided by Blackwell's office. The total included some absentee ballots but not all those cast by military personnel and other Americans stationed overseas.

Blackwell said there could have been as many as 175,000 provisional ballots cast, but only 135,149 had been tallied with the precinct count at 99 per cent. That was enough to throw the results into disarray, however.

Provisional ballots are cast by voters who have moved, those who are not on registration rolls or by people who had previously been deemed ineligible to vote.

In 2000, when 100,000 provisional ballots were cast, Blackwell said about 90 per cent of them were legitimate.

He warned it could be two weeks before the final official total was determined for the state. But he said the election was well managed save a "hiccup here or a hiccup there."

Among issues that could see Ohio's contest being contested long after it was over was a lawsuit filed late on Tuesday contending that the state lacks specific standards for fairly evaluating and counting provisional votes.

Legal maneuvering on Election Day included a federal judge's ruling that those who failed to receive absentee ballots must be allowed to cast provisional votes, and an appeals court ruling that allowed Republican and Democratic Party observers into polling places to challenge suspect voters.

Waiting times of two hours or more were common in many Ohio voting districts and there were scattered reports that some polling places were still dealing with voters early Wednesday morning, nearly a full day after balloting got under way.

- REUTERS