A Marion County Judge is ordering County Clerk Beth White to instruct all poll workers to treat any challenged mail-in absentee ballot like a provisional ballot.  

Marion County Republicans argued that the Clerk’s training manual was incorrect when it told poll workers to put all absentee ballots into voting machines.

The GOP said the clerk failed to instruct poll workers about what to do when ballots were challenged and that once ballots were put in the voting machine they were considered cast.

White says she will comply with the Court order.

So far more than 85,000 absentee ballots have been requested.and 26,000 have been returned by mail.

If you’d told me a year ago that John McCain would (a) be the Republican presidential nominee and (b) be holding a campaign rally here the day before the election, I’d have keeled over on the spot.

And yet, today we find out that Sen. McMavericky will be here on Monday in an attempt to put a few last-ditch points on the board.

Every single poll has shown that Indiana, redder than red for the past four decades, is in play — with things all tied up. This shouldn’t be happening, but it is, and it’s happening because Barack Obama didn’t take us for granted.

So, here’s the question: Will it be enough, or will it be too little too late?

I’ve said for a month now that Obama wins Indiana by a couple points. I’m sticking with that, even if McAllOverTheFearAndLoathingTalkingPoints shows up a few hours before the polls open.

We can debate ’til the cows come home how things might have been if he’d connected on the economy and not picked an empty Dolce suit as his running mate, but he made the choices he made, and how he has to have to come to fly-over country to defend those choices in order to avoid complete embarrassment when the Magic Map lights up on election night.

I’m sitting here at my desk trying to decide whether to vote early. I know millions of people are doing this, but I’m still slightly uncomfortable with the idea. It’s supposed to be convenient. I have a hard time believing that when I look at the long lines at the voting sites. But, of course, they could be even longer on Election Day.

I think back to what Gov. Daniels said before heading out on his last RV tour of the state. When asked if he would vote early, he said no, that he looks on Election Day as a communal event, almost like going to church. I feel the same way. My earliest memory of Election Day is being three years old and going with my mother and father when they voted in Ohio’s presidential primary in the spring of 1952. I was fascinated by the whole thing and have never missed voting since I became old enough. It just doesn’t seem the same if you come in early and do it at your own convenience.

I did vote early once, in 1988 when I was scheduled to be in Washington at Dan Quayle headquarters on Election Day, but that was unavoidable.

The one thing that bugs me is this: What if I vote early and then some late information comes out about a candidate that would change my mind? Like he’s a child molester or on al Qaeda’s payroll? Wouldn’t you want to know that? But if you vote early, you could wind up with egg on your face, having already set your ballot in stone with incomplete data.

When all is said and done, job probably trumps other considerations. Since Election Day is like Super Bowl Sunday for someone in my job, I can’t spend hours standing in line to vote. I have to be in here telling you how your vote was cast. So I’ll probably vote early. But I won’t be completely happy about it.

The Indianapolis Star and the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics both released poll numbers today indicating that the Guv’s race is over. The Star has Democratic challenger Jill Long Thompson down by 18 points; the Downs Center shows her trailing by 17 points. I still think this one will wind up around 10 percent because of the Obama factor.

Speaking of Obama, the Star poll showed yesterday that he and John McCain are in a dead heat. The Downs Center poll shows the two candidates tied at 47 percent.

The Downs Center also polled the other two statewide races.

In the Attorney General’s race, Republican Greg Zoeller leads Democrat Linda Pence 46 percent to 42 percent. Republican Tony Bennett leads Democrat Richard Wood 45 percent to 41 percent in the race for Superintendent of Public Instruction.

What does all this mean?

The two down-ballot statewide races are tied to Obama’s turnout and performance; the Guv’s race is the result of a nearly flawless campaign by incumbent Mitch Daniels and a nearly nonexistent campaign by Thompson.

Marion County Assessor Greg Bowes is disputing claims by the township assessors that the property tax appeals are proving their initial assessments were more correct than the reassessed property values.

The assessors, who are fighting a proposal to consolidate their office functions to the county level, say many of the residential appeals show homes were over-assessed and the County can’t do a better job so citizens should oppose the consolidation referendum.

Bowes says the townships’ math is misleading.  He says while some reassessment appeals have come back closer to the township figures, he says 75-percent of all the property in Marion County was not appealed and the County captured nearly $2 billion of  assessed value missed by the assessors.

In addition, Bowes also says only 10 percent of the appeals have been completed, so the township assessors assertions that the reassessments were bad is premature at best.