OHIO Failure to register leads to booted ballots

Counties must submit final tallies by Dec. 1.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- Most of the presidential election provisional ballots rejected so far came from people not registered to vote, election officials said Monday.
Those people typically thought they were registered to vote in another county or another address, officials said.
Other reasons some of the 155,337 ballots were rejected included missing information such as addresses or signatures and people voting in precincts where they do not live.
"Some people thought because they had changed their mailing address at the post office, or had changed their utilities, that they had done everything necessary to be eligible to vote," said Nancy Moore, deputy director of the Belmont County Board of Elections in eastern Ohio. "They still have to change their address at the board of elections. We're not mind readers."
"They swear up and down they're registered to vote, and they're not," said Bill Thompson, deputy elections director in Pike County.
The tallies
Unofficial vote totals show President Bush beating Democrat John Kerry by 136,000 votes in Ohio and Kerry has conceded there aren't enough outstanding votes to swing the state his way.
Some people, though, said they were holding out hope until all votes were counted. Lawyers with Kerry's campaign were in Ohio to check into voters' concerns about ballots, but said they weren't trying to challenge the election.
Most of Ohio's 88 counties are continuing the process of verifying the ballots cast by people who said they were registered but whose names did not appear on rolls Election Day.
Of the 11 counties that have completed checking ballots, 81 percent, or 4,277 out of 5,310 ballots, are valid, according to a survey Monday by The Associated Press. Most of the counties are in rural areas.
Other counties that have completed partial tallies reported that most of the provisional ballots were being counted. In 2000, about 87 percent of provisional ballots were counted.
More numbers
This year, Belmont County rejected 42 percent of the 1,067 provisional votes cast while other counties that completed their count showed percentages topping 90 percent.
Cuyahoga County, where Cleveland is located, has processed 40 percent, or 9,719 votes, of its 24,788 provisional ballots and rejected a third, according to a board tally. Most are being rejected because the voters were not registered.
In Montgomery County, 6,125 of the 8,000 provisional ballots processed so far are valid. Of the 1,875 invalid ballots, more than 1,000 were rejected because the people were not registered and 685 were rejected because voters went to the wrong precinct, according to the board.
The board still has to count 1,227 ballots.
Before the election, Democrats lost a court appeal seeking to allow people to cast provisional ballots in precincts where they do not live.
Votes cast in the wrong precinct made up the smallest portion of rejected ballots in many counties, which election officials attributed to poll workers directing people to correct voting places, public education campaigns and heightened media attention about provisional voting regulations.
"People were aware of the provisional ballots, and they really tried to get in the correct precinct," said Janet Brenneman, director of Delaware County Board of Elections.
The counties have until Dec. 1 to complete their final count.
A third party was already promising to ask for a recount of the Ohio vote.
Green Party candidate David Cobb said on Monday that the party has raised the $113,600 needed to ask for the recount.
Cobb and Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik have said they were concerned about reports of problems in Ohio's voting process.
Cobb must make his request to all the county election boards. The count cannot begin until the vote is officially certified, which can happen as soon as Dec. 3, said Carlo LoParo, spokesman for Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell.