Now let's assume the remaining 110,000 are split -- Kerry will try to claim most are Democratic, but in reality half will be the Evangelical Christians voting for Bush. They registered just as many voters as the Democrats in the final weeks. That would give each candidate 55,000 votes.
Net gain would only be 15,000 for Kerry, and NOT ENOUGH to change anything in Ohio!
There are 135,149 provisional ballots in Ohio, and I believe that is now with 100% of precincts reporting the numbers of such ballots. There is nothing at the Sec of State website that indicates these include absentee ballots--I think they mean that many of the provisional ballots were given to persons who also requested absentee ballots but claim they did not receive them or they failed to mail them in on time. The absentee ballots as a whole must number at least 10,000 to 20,000 and they will break heavily for Bush.
Provisional ballots did not exist in 2000, having been created by Congress through the Help America Vote Act of 2002. There is no experience in Ohio dealing with provisional ballots except during the most recent primaries, in which case only those provisional ballots in the contested districts were counted. There is basically no way to gauge how the chips will fall. There is no reliable information on how those were counted but given that these were primary votes, I doubt there were many legal fights over each vote.
Contrary to popular media myth, a significant number (perhaps most) of provisional ballots are not registration errors per se, but involve persons who requested absentee ballots and did not receive them. Because these votes can be checked against the absentee votes that eventually come in, double voting is difficult if not impossible unless the counters are bought (both absentee and provisional ballots are paper and have identifying information on them). This number represents approximately 20% of the provisional ballots, I would imagine. About 10% of these will be thrown out because they are simply liars and are trying to vote twice. This also means that many provisional ballots must remain provisional until the absentee vote deadline (ten days). Knowing the number of provisional ballots given to persons who had requested absentee ballots will tell us whether we have to wait ten days or not. Because there's no way to know this number without looking at the backs of the provisional ballots (where such info is recorded), all the provisional ballots must be at least looked at. The poll watchers should also have fairly accurate tallies, so we should know this number by noon or so. In other words, the world should know the result of this election by noon. Even if the total number of provisional-absentee ballots is great enough to withhold calling the state today, absentees greatly favor Bush overall, therefore the election will be over if that's all Kerry's got to complain about.
Another 20% of provisionals are simply whack-jobs, Naderites, and other assorted dodos who probably have no clue what they're doing. These will be thrown out without dispute (assume that neither party will want to even open provisional ballots by those registered as independent). Though the Kerryites claim they want to count every vote, it clearly isn't in their interest to do so.
A full 20-25% are non-whack jobs, but did screw up their registration of their own accord and their vote will be tossed. These are the ones Kerry will fight tooth and nail for, if the majority are Dems. Most of these will be late or faulty change-of-addresses. Since Dems don't pay rent and get evicted a lot, they change addresses more than the rest of us and these will be primarily Dems. It should not matter.
I would say, at best, 60% of the provisional ballots will be counted without much dispute, and these will, at best, break 60-40 for Kerry in Cleveland and a handful in Cincinnati. More likely is that these will reflect the current vote distribution and will be a wash.
My prediction--Kerry gets a maximum net gain of 25,000 votes, before the absentees are all counted, at which point that number will drop to a max net gain, after all is said and done, of 14,000.