Please don't forget provisionals and absentee ballots

[Heywood J]

I'm seeing a lot of victory dancing, which isn't a bad thing. Not at all. But I'd just like to implore people not to forget about the two stacks of paper ballots sitting around in each district which may or may not have been counted yet.

Those things hold the key to success in the most marginal of wins, and if you're going to see trickery, it may very well happen there. It's easier to tinker with a locked box when no one's directly watching or when no one's paying attention to the numbers reported. It's also easy to "disappear" one of those locked boxes if it's not properly secured.

As a whole, we'd probably do well to make sure of the safety of those ballots and to keep them free from tampering or being discarded unreasonably.

[Mr_Spock]

1. Good point

...if all goes as expected, those ballots should increase Dem margins...

[Rosalind]

2. Absentee ballots in VA counted in vote totals...

Don't know about Montana.

[Heywood J]

4. .

That's at least one load off my mind, then. I was a bit concerned that we'd wake up to see Mr. Macaca in the lead when they popped open the absentee cartons.

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. Also, for the future, they should have the same status as the

normal ballots, and not only (purportedly) counted as an after-thought in tight races.