"Too Close for Comfort"

"Beating expectations is great. But expectations don't get to vote in Congress (although false hopes frequently do.) Schmidt's narrow scrape may inject a little fear into the pea-sized brains of the average GOP deputy, especially if he or she is within fallout range of the Coingate scandal. But an outright defeat, as Cook suggests, would have generated a hell of a lot more negative media coverage, and might even have triggered a stampede the next time the House wranglers went to round up the herd for a cattle call, I mean a roll call vote.

That humilation, at least, was avoided. But how it was avoided is a story worth a closer examination -- by guys armed with subpoenas, if I had my way, which of course I won't.

If you followed the returns last night, you may have noticed that one county in the district -- Clermont -- was extremely late in reporting part of its returns. Clermont is the second largest pool of votes in the district and provided roughly a quarter of all ballots cast yesterday. It's also a GOP stronghold (in a GOP stronghold district) and Jean Schmidt's home turf. If you followed the returns last night, you may have noticed that one county in the district -- Clermont -- was extremely late in reporting part of its returns. Clermont is the second largest pool of votes in the district and provided roughly a quarter of all ballots cast yesterday. It's also a GOP stronghold (in a GOP stronghold district) and Jean Schmidt's home turf.

That being the case, it's not a big surprise Schmidt did well there, carrying the county with 58% of the two-party vote -- less than what a GOP candidate can usually expect, but enough to give her nearly a 5,000 vote margin in Clermont, and thus the election.

At about 9:00 PM ET last night, however, things didn't look nearly as good for Ms. Schmidt. In fact, her name looked more like Schmud. With 88% of the district's precincts reporting, including more than half of Clermont's, the count was almost evenly split -- with Schmidt holding a lead of less than 900 votes.

At that point, though, the Clermont election bureau experienced a "technical malfunction" with its optical scan readers:

The Board of Elections in Clermont County, east of Cincinnati, says it's optical scanners haven't counted all the ballots yet because it was so hot -- and humid -- Tuesday."-from the post on Whiskey Bar by billmon. Given recent electoral history in Ohio, it doesn't seem too unreasonable to consider this argument. Read the whole post for more details.