And the US presidentail election winners are - lawyers

Ohio has emerged as the most likely setting for any court fight that would put the close US presidential election into overtime, while armies of lawyers sent to other battleground states found themselves with little to do.

The focus was on tens of thousands of uncounted votes in Ohio – most of them provisional ballots required nationally for the first time this year – which could be greater than the margin between President George Bush and Senator John Kerry.

Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell said the number of provisional ballots in the state could be as high as the 250,000 Democrats were claiming.

Jennifer Palmieri, a spokeswoman for Kerry in Ohio, said: ”We think that a good bit of those voters will be our voters. We think that is more than enough voters to win the state,” Palmieri said. “Those votes have to be counted before we know who won the state.”

The Bush campaign scoffed at the notion that the uncounted ballots could make a difference in Ohio.

“There are 140,000 provisional ballots. Historically, only 7% to 20% of those would be counted,” said Bush campaign communications director Nicolle Devenish. “Even if twice that many end up getting counted, he can’t close the gap of his defeat in the state. It’s desperate.”

Even in Ohio, scene of the fiercest legal skirmishing in the days leading to the election, generally smooth voting produced less partisan finger-pointing than expected, and fewer lawsuits.

With polls closed, Democrats had not deployed their trained “SWAT teams” of election lawyers, a precaution this year because of the close presidential race and the bitter memory of the 36-day recount battle in Florida in 2000.

Florida went handily into Bush’s column, putting some 3,000 Democratic lawyers largely off duty.

Earlier, lawsuits in key states sought to extend deadlines to count absentee ballots and to clarify rules for evaluating backup ballots cast by voters who would otherwise get no vote this year.

A Republican-sponsored suit filed before polls closed in Ohio asked a federal judge to force the state’s Republican chief election official to rework rules for counting provisional ballots.

Republicans asked for a guarantee that they could watch, alongside Democrats, as state officials prepare the provisional ballots to be counted. That process will take several days.

Provisional ballots are not counted until after the election – 10 days afterward in Ohio’s case.

They are cast by voters who come to the polls but find they are not listed on the rolls, or that their qualifications to vote are in question.

The lawsuit said Blackwell, the Ohio secretary of state, issued “vague, incomplete and insufficient” directions for evaluating which provisional ballots should count.

Even before Election Day, Ohio was the scene of lengthy and complicated legal battles over provisional ballots and other issues. Plans for counting provisional ballots changed several times as Blackwell issued conflicting instructions and courts rewrote the rules.

Outside Ohio, the independent American Civil Liberties Union asked that Florida absentee ballots mailed within the United States be subject to the same deadline, November 12, as overseas ballots.

In Pennsylvania, Republicans went to federal court yesterday to get a list of everyone who received an absentee ballot and to ask for more time to investigate whether any absentee ballots are illegitimate.