Ohio vote undecided amid ballot confusion

5.37pm

COLUMBUS - Ohio was too close to call in a tight election battle on Tuesday between Republican President George W. Bush and his Democratic rival John Kerry, with long lines at polling places and late legal manoeuvring adding to the tension.

Television networks were unable to project which camp would collect Ohio's 20 electoral votes, one of the biggest prizes of the US presidential election.

Long lines at polling places that stayed open more than two hours past the scheduled 7.30 p.m. EDT closing time prompted assurances from election officials that those in line would get to vote.

"These folks will be able to vote as long as they were on line by 7.30 p.m.," said Dana Walch, director of legislative affairs at the Ohio Secretary of State's office, citing the heavy turnout.

Walch said roughly 73 per cent of registered voters were thought to have turned out in Ohio, apparently the highest number in a dozen years.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party obtained an order in federal court requiring election officials in two central counties to let voters use paper punch card ballots as well as touch-screens to speed up the lines.

But the Ohio attorney general filed an appeal of the ruling, adding to the confusion.

"I'm not sure they'd be able to implement (the order) in time to do any good," said Steve Huefner, a law professor at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law.

One voter in Oberlin, in northwest Ohio, said the line she was in was three hours long. The Democratic Party complained of lines up to five hours long in some precincts.

The legal manoeuvring on election day included another federal judge's ruling that those who failed to receive absentee ballots must be allowed to cast provisional votes, and an appeals court ruling that allowed Republican and Democratic party observers into polling places to challenge suspect voters.

Despite concerns of widespread challenges to voters' status, few such challenges were lodged.

"A few people are being challenged, but not to an extreme extent -- it's been light," Ohio Democratic party spokesman Dan Trevas said.

"The process has been smooth," echoed state Republican party spokesman Jason Mauk.

With the predicted turnout and surveys showing the electorate evenly divided, there was speculation the outcome in this pivotal battleground state might not be known for days.

"I've never seen an election that was perceived to be this close this late," said John Green, a veteran political observer who heads the Bliss Institute for Applied Politics at the University of Akron.

No Republican has won the White House without winning Ohio, and the state is in play this year due to job losses of 230,000 since Bush took office.

Most problems involved forbidden electioneering inside polling places, election workers confused about how much to help voters, and the occasional voter who was turned away.

Thousands of provisional ballots cast on Tuesday will be counted in a 10- to 15-day period after the election, along with late-arriving absentee and overseas military votes.

Ohio law calls for an automatic recount if the final tally shows a margin of 0.25 per cent or less.

In 2000 Bush bested Al Gore by four percentage points in Ohio.

- REUTERS