Mary Jo Kilroy

Don't expect to hear if there will be a recount until after Thanksgiving in the 15th Congressional District race.

The board of elections for Madison County, one of three making up the district, will not release its vote counts to the secretary of state before the deadline of Nov. 25. If election boards finish counts before that day they can submit them to the secretary of state, which would then begin officially certifying the election.

Two supporters of 15th Congressional District candidate are suing Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner in the Ohio Supreme Court over her alleged advice on how to handle provisional ballots.

The Columbus Dispatch reports that Stivers' (R-Columbus) supporters allege that Brunner (D) has told the Franklin County Board of Elections to count provisional ballots "even if voters do not print their names and only sign them" so long as they can be identified. More than 3 percent of ballots fall into this category.

Voters in the 15th Congressional District can no longer cast ballots, but that doesn’t mean get-out-the-vote efforts are necessarily over.
 
About 1,500 voters have been notified by the Franklin County Board of Elections that they need to correct errors on their absentee ballots or else have them invalidated. To fix errors such as missing signatures, Social Security or driver’s license numbers, voters need to come to the elections board, said board of elections spokesman Ben Piscitelli.
 
That doesn’t mean campaigns are leaving the election’s result up to voters alone as Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Columbus) is 393 votes behind Steve Stivers (R-Columbus).

Supporters of 15th Congressional District candidate Mary Jo Kilroy are donating money to her, even though Election Day was last week.

Kilroy (D-Columbus) could deal with legal challenges or a recount now that she's only about 400 votes behind Steve Stivers (R-Columbus). With the race still unfinished, liberal bloggers are sending their readers to Kilroy's ActBlue page and encourgaing them to give.

So far 105 supporters have donated $10,560. 

While no one knows whether Steve Stivers or Mary Jo Kilroy has won the race for the 15th Congressional District, it’s clear that libertarian Mark Noble did better than expected.

Noble won almost 5 percent – or more than 13,000 votes – on Election Day. The last pre-election poll for the race showed Noble with 2 percent support. With about 400 votes separating Stivers (R-Columbus) and Kilroy (D-Columbus), one wonders if some of Noble’s supporters would have voted for either of the major-party candidates had he not run.

Steve Stivers lead over Mary Jo Kilroy rose Thursday after more election returns from Union County were processed.

Stivers (R-Columbus) is ahead of Kilroy (D-Columbus) by 390 votes, Stivers campaign said. That's a net gain of 224 votes from Stivers' total Wednesday, which came after the Franklin County Board of Elections counted more than 15,000 ballots Wednesday.

Stivers' new lead comes from Union County's Taylor Township, which reported its votes today and gave Stivers 224 of them and Kilroy an additional 146.

Updated - Unless a candidate concedes, no one may know the winner of the 15th Congressional District race for weeks, as various legal dates come and go before a binding result is reached.

Steve Stivers (R-Columbus) is 393 votes ahead of Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Columbus) after more ballots were counted by the Franklin County Board of Elections last week. The board is responsible for tabulating results for the race because it belongs to the most populous county of the three that make up the district: Franklin, Union and Madison.

Steve Stivers has a 146-vote lead over Mary Jo Kilroy in the race for the 15th Congressional District.

Stivers' (R-Columbus) campaign announced Wednesday night that after paper ballots were counted by the Franklin Co. Board of Elections that his lead has shrunk from previously being 321 votes.

Press secretary Rob Nichols spun the development positively in a statement.

"The Stivers for Congress campaign is grateful to have received the most votes on Election Night, and we are happy that twenty-four hours later and after fifteen thousand additional ballots were counted, we continue to have a triple digit lead in this race," he said.

Ohio Democratic Party chair Chris Redfern (D-Catawba Island) talked up Democratic numbers in Franklin County while making the case that Democrats are confident Franklin Co. Commissioner Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Columbus) will end up winning the race for Ohio's 15th Congressional District.

Redfern pointed to the performance of businessman David W. Robinson (D-Columbus) in Franklin County in his race against U.S. Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-Westerville). Robinson lost the race to Tiberi, but Redfern said that Robinson outperformed Tiberi in Franklin County by around 7,000 votes. Redfern said this bodes well for Kilroy.

About 300 votes currently separate Kilroy from opponent state Sen. Steve Stivers (R-Columbus) in Ohio's 15th, with Stivers currently in the lead.

Independent candidate for the 15th Congressional District Don Eckhart appears to have won about 4 percent of the vote by running on a conservative social and economic platform, which was seen by some as a potential threat to Republican candidate Steve Stivers.
 
According to unofficial results from the Franklin County Board of Elections, which includes totals from Union and Madison counties, Stivers won 49 percent, Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Columbus) received about 42 percent, Eckhart 4 percent, and libertarian Mark Noble almost 5 percent.
 
Eckhart said he won fewer votes than he expected but ran to be the pro-life alternative to Stivers after they supported U.S. Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Columbus) in 2006. Pryce favors abortion rights.