As the nation waits with baited breath on November 7 to see if Ohio, America’s quintessential swing state, turns from red to blue, it increasingly looks like frustrated voters may have to wait days before knowing who are the winners of the contests for Governor and U.S. Senate.

Since at least the 2004 presidential election, Ohio has been known for voting practices that would make a backwater banana republic blush. And it looks like despite millions spent on new technology, things just haven’t gotten any better. The primary elections were a disaster, and now that Ohio has a no-excuse law for absentee ballots on the books, county election boards simply do not have the capacity to count the votes in a quick, accurate manner.

The situation is not helped by the fact that J. Kenneth Blackwell, all but certain to suffer a landslide defeat in the governor’s election, refuses to allow counties to scan in the absentee ballots prior to Election Day. The reason for this is simple: Blackwell and his struggling Republican pal Mike DeWine will lose heavily in Ohio’s urban counties, and the longer the results are delayed, the more doubt the GOP can cast on the outcome of the elections.

Blackwell’s self-serving interpretation of the law is an outrage, but with November 7 just around the corner, county election officials have neither the time nor the inclination to make Blackwell do what’s right.

It looks like November 7 could be a banner night for Congressmen Sherrod Brown and Ted Strickland. If they win, let’s hope we all know it before Santa gives Karl Rove a lump of coal.

Both political parties are working hard to ensure that Americans go out en masse on November 7th to cast their votes. However, will the votes be counted this time?

After a number of contentious elections many Americans don’t even have faith that their votes are being counted due to new electronic voting machines that are, at best, seriously flawed.

ABCNews has an article this morning highlighting some of the problems that exist with voting machines and explains how easily they can be hacked.

From ABCNews:

Computer experts and government officials have voiced serious concerns that if these machines malfunction, no paper record will exist for a recount. Even worse is the fear that an election could be hacked.

Princeton University researchers using an Accuvote TS — a touch screen version of the Diebold machine — showed how easy it would be to deploy a virus that would, in seconds, flip the vote of any election.

Why do we always wait until after elections to question whether our votes will be fairly and accurately counted?