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(11PM) Only 50% of ballots are in, in Cuyahoga County
As of 11PM tonight. That's in as in "in a box at the polls", not even counted.

Cuyahoga County is counting
Ballots didn't start coming in to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections until 9 p.m. tonight, according to WKYC TV 3 reports, because of long lines when the polls closed. About 50% of the ballots are in the BOE as of 11 p.m.
(via Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Hmmm..... Isn't Cuyahoga County not only heavily Democratic, but a key focus of Republican voter supression efforts?

Not only is Cuyahoga County heavily Democratic, voter registration there increased fivefold (LA Times) over 2000. And yes, the Republicans are up to their usual tricks:

In Ohio, within little more than a week, the Board of Elections in Cuyahoga County received complaints of voters being contacted by people they said claimed to be from the election board: One Cleveland woman said her mother got a call from such a man telling her, falsely, that the location of her polling station had changed.

Another woman said two men posing as election officials knocked on her door and said they had come to pick up her absentee ballot.

An elderly woman in a suburban senior center complained about a call telling her the Nov. 2 election had been postponed until Nov. 3.

"It's happening more and more," said Board of Elections Administrator Jane Platten.

In addition, Cuyahoga County is where the Republicans made their infamous attempt (back) to have 35,000 ballots thrown out, based on a bad dump from their own databases.

So right now, the story when we get up this morning is that Ohio is "too close to call." But the story should be that a Democratic stronghold has yet to be counted, because of the "catastrophic success" of a five-fold increase in registration, and Republican thuggery.

I certainly hope Kerry has some top attack talent on the ground—not in the air, on the ground—in Cuyahoga County right now. And if the networks wheel out that aged, aged wuss, Warren Christopher (back) we'll know the fix is really in.

UPDATE FUX calls Ohio for Bush. The other majors do not follow suit.


All the votes are NOT in
UPDATE The totals in Cuyahoga (Here is a handy county by county breakdown):

Kerry, John F. - Democratic - 263,028 - 62.73%
Bush, George W. - Republican - 154,396 - 36.82%
Precincts Reporting: - 62.19% - 419,280

What I don't know, of course, is the total remaining.

NOTE: The big precincts still counting are all heavily Kerry.

Lucas
Kerry, John F. - Democratic - 77,375 - 61.74%
Bush, George W. - Republican - 47,666 - 38.03%
Precincts Reporting: - 35.56% - 125,333

Tug-of-war on calling Ohio for Bush
UPDATE NBC projects Ohio for Bush.

UPDATE Then again (1:08AM), via Atrios comments:

Air America just had an Ohio official who said that Kerry has a 190,000 margin of victory in Cuyhoga county and that these votes have not been added to official totals and thus that Bush does not have Ohio yet. Meanwhile, MSNBC just called Ohio for Bush giving him 269 and since the House would give it to bush, MSNBC has called it for Bush.

UPDATE However (1:30AM) neither CNN not C-SPAN project Ohio for Bush. In addition, NH goes for Kerry (!!).

UPDATE Via Air America (thank God, someone's covering this)

Ohio Republicans won in court today. They challenged 23,000 voters, mostly minorities. The only problem is that the ruling came half way through the Election Day, which means that poll workers had already been letting these challenge voters in without, well, challenging them. Democrats fear chaos may ensue from this ruling. They appealed to the Supreme Court.

Ah, the Supreme Court. Will it be divided 4-4? Beautiful....

UPDATE CNN moves Ohio to too close to call. ABC, CBS, PBS have not called it.