Awaiting Word | Planet Waves for Nov. 3, 4:44 p.m. CET As you've probably figured out, the Kerry campaign has a decision to make about whether to fight for Ohio's electoral votes. As I understand it, here's how it works. Essentially, the Kerry campaign has to decide whether there are enough potential Kerry votes within the 140,000 to 270,000 (the numbers are conflicting) provisional and absentee ballots to possibly clinch the state. These absentee and provisional ballots are on paper. Kerry is currently behind in Ohio by 125,000 votes, most of which were tallied electronically. So prior to a count of those paper votes beginning, apparently in 11 days under Ohio rules, there is a statistical determination to make: within those uncounted votes, can there possibly be enough to close the gap? But this creates another problem. Even if Kerry were to win Ohio and thus the election, he and Edwards would be taking office with a defeat in the popular vote of about 3 million -- some six times the margin that Bush "lost" the 2000 election by. That would be very difficult, from what you might call a moral standpoint. Even though Bush set the precedent by losing the election and then taking office, it was by a smaller margin of victory, and Bush is a different kind of person. A Kerry campaign blogger in California just wrote to me. "Over one hundred thousand votes have NOT been counted in Ohio. Bush wants to declare a victory in New Mexico where the margin is less than 1,000. And there are voting machine problems in Iowa preventing full tabulation of the vote." Beneath this whole issue is the involvement of Diebold Corp., which makes paperless voting machines. Its president is Ward O'Dell, a good friend of the president. I have not heard this word mentioned on television today, whether BBC, CNN or CNBC, the only three channels I have available. Kerry is under a lot of pressure from the media to concede the election and "get it over-with." There is always a big move to "get back to normal" after a disruptive series of events like this. BBC is now reporting how well the financial markets are doing under the apparent clear Bush victory. I say that unless we demand that there be no winner until every vote counts, we're kidding ourselves about voting in the first place.