We still have something to hope for in Ohio's 15th district, where the race between Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy and Republican Steve Stivers is now in recount. According to a blog entry in the Columbus Dispatch (warning: notorious Republican rag), Stivers presently has a lead of 393 votes, out of about 290,000 votes cast. They're now counting late-arriving absentee votes and provisional ballots -- the Kilroy campaign says that there are still about 27,000 of these to be counted, and that they are likely to swing her way, so we may get another win here. They keep counting absentee votes that arrive as late as Nov. 14th (as long as they were postmarked by Election Day), so this is going to take a while.

This isn't the first time Kilroy has been in this situation. In 2006, she nearly unseated incumbent Deborah Pryce (who is not running for re-election this year) in a recount process where she came up about 1000 votes short, out of about 220,000 votes. In that recount, the addition of late absentee votes and provisional ballots added about 2,000 votes to Kilroy's total; so there is good reason to be optimistic that she'll catch up this time.

I got email today saying that a Kilroy Counts Votes Committee has been set up, a PAC that is accepting donations at the ActBlue page. It says that Stivers has hired a team of lawyers to "watch" the locations where absentee and provisional ballots are being counted, presumably to raise as many challenges as they can. So they're asking for help to confront the challenges. Since it's a separate PAC, any donations do not count towards the $2,300 limit for the campaign.

I know we're all relieved that the election is over, and you've probably had enough of people wheedling you for money. But the process won't be over for a while in a number of places (OH-15, CA-04, the Senate races in Georgia, Minnesota and Alaska ...). OH-15 is my district, and I've never been represented by a Democrat in the House, ever in my life. The election has felt great so far, and it will feel even greater if we can get in a few more wins.