By Tom Brown
Columbus, Ohio - Ohio was too close to call in a tight election battle on Tuesday between Republican President George 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 United States presidential election.
Long lines at polling places that stayed open more than two hours past the scheduled 7:30pm 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 7.30pm," said Dana Walch, director of legislative affairs at the Ohio Secretary of State's office, citing the heavy turnout.
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Walch said roughly 73 percent 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.
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