It's still a loss

Now that so many of us have taken heart from a close loss, let me say that it sucks.

When I woke up and found out the results of Ohio-2 and then read DeDurkheim's piece that voting in Schmidt's home base was delayed by HUMIDITY the first thing I thought of was Robert Caro's second volume on LBJ, "Means of Ascent". Before posting this I found out that Billmon had the same thoughts in more eloquent form.

Humidity? Something tells me a Hackett vote or two stuck together, like Condi glamour shots in Bush's private Crawford study (the fact that Bush has a study is a supreme irony, he certainly doesn't study intelligence reports there).

It's the method of the delay that is dubious, as Madwoman stated:

Out if 91 precincts [in Clermont], about 12% of the [district] total, the margin went from 0.89% to 3.49%. In other words it almost quadrupled . .

I was projecting that, extrapolating from the first 100 precincts, the last 91 would have about 10,000 votes. In fact, the final tally has them giving out 50% more than that...over 15,000 votes.

Also, while Schmidt's margin in the first 100 [precincts] was about 56% to 44%, the margin is much, much wider in the last 91 -- 60% to 40%.

Also, this puts the overall total well out of range of any recount margin.

Somehow managed to do pull out a more substantial victory once they knew the totals huh?

And as Billmon goes on to find it gets curiouser:

The ability of the Rovians to pull fresh GOP votes out of [Warren and Clermont] counties certainly challenged plausibility, and, in Clermont's case, almost defied mathematics. Consider the fact that according to the Census Bureau, Clermont's population rose only 4.4% (about 7,800 souls) between 2000 and 2003, while reported GOP turnout increased by roughly 31% (about 14,600 votes) from 2000 to 2004. This in a county that only had about 122,000 registered voters last year, according to the Cincinatti Enquirer.

I'm not by nature a conspiracist (except to the extent it makes things funnier) but something continues to smell. From Samuel Tilden on, the GOP seems to win most (but not all) the close contest. And after the shinagans of Ohio in 2004, I have no problems in calling bullshit.