The decision by District Judge James Carr of Toledo was hailed by Democrats who said it will enable more people to vote who might otherwise be excluded. Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell immediately appealed the decision.

Richard Lillie, special counsel for Blackwell, said legal struggles likely will continue beyond Nov. 2, potentially leaving the fate of some provisional ballots unclear for weeks after Election Day.

"If the order is, 'Give everyone within the county a provisional ballot,' that's fine," he said. "But then the question will become, at least on the part of some parties, should or can those provisional votes be counted?"

Provisional ballots have been used for years to allow a person to vote when that person's name is not for some reason on the registration roll but the voter is, in fact, eligible to vote. Ballots are set aside and checked and counted within 10 days of the election.

Blackwell issued a directive Sept. 16 to county boards of election telling them to count provisional ballots only if they are cast in the correct polling place. Poll workers were instructed to help people find correct polling locations.

Carr said the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 "contains no such restrictions." The act established national guidelines for provisional voting.

In overruling Blackwell's directive, Carr concluded that the law requires only that people vote in the county in which they are registered.

"Refusal to allow provisional balloting at the 'wrong' precinct, as (Blackwell's directive) seeks to do, furthers no state interest," Carr wrote. "If even a single vote is lost due to the failure to implement (the law), that loss alone is irreparable."

Carr said allowing provisional voting on a countywide level would simplify the poll workers' jobs, and reduce the chance of fraud and disenfranchising voters, he said.

Blackwell disagreed, saying the federal law "specifically leaves the issuing and counting of those ballots to states in accordance with state law."

Blackwell said a federal court in Missouri on Tuesday contradicted Carr's interpretation. In addition, he said, the bipartisan Federal Election Assistance Commission acknowledged that Ohio's provisional-ballot law - which is shared by 27 other states - is in compliance with the federal law.

"We continue to believe that Ohio's laws are fair, just and in compliance with all federal statutes," Blackwell said.

He appealed Carr's ruling to the Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Ohio Democrats brought the issue to Carr, nominated to the bench in 1994 by President Clinton, in a lawsuit to block Blackwell's directive. With both parties registering hundreds of thousands of new voters in Ohio, Democrats were concerned that some may be improperly left off voter rolls, while others may not know where to vote.

"The problem with voting in the wrong precinct tends to happen more in the urban areas, where people tend to move around more and polling places change more," said state Sen. Mark Mallory, D-Cincinnati, who last week urged the Hamilton County Board of Elections to ignore Blackwell's order.

John Williams, director of the Hamilton County Board of Elections, has warned that allowing people to vote anywhere in the county invites chaos.

Tim Burke, chairman of the county Democratic Party and the county elections board, said the decision reaffirms what Hamilton County did in 2000, when it counted about 300 ballots cast in the wrong location. Most of the roughly 16,000 provisional ballots in Hamilton County that year were cast in the proper polling place.

Expanding provisional ballots countywide, Burke said, is not to encourage people to vote wherever they want, but rather to make sure new voters or those who recently moved aren't penalized for going to the wrong polling place.

People who vote at the wrong polling place may not be able to vote on a full slate of state and local candidates and issues.

Carr ordered Blackwell to issue a new directive on provisional balloting by Monday. Lillie said the state would comply, but Carlo LoParo, spokesman for Blackwell, said he expects the appeals court to delay that order.

In 2000, there were about 100,000 provisional ballots statewide. George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by 165,019 votes. Most public-opinion polls have Bush and Democratic candidate John Kerry in a dead heat this year in Ohio.

Provisional balloting is the latest in controversies in Ohio that began with the Florida-inspired debates over punch-card ballots versus electronic touch screens. In the end, counties with punch cards kept their same systems.

The state Democratic and Republican parties are expected to deploy lawyers and volunteers on Election Day to monitor poll sites.

E-mail jsiegel@enquirer.com