Election results certified; Talent the official winner

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Republican Jim Talent now officially is the winner of Missouri's U.S. Senate race and is expected to take office Saturday.

Secretary of State Matt Blunt certified the results of the Nov. 5 election Thursday. Because Talent won a special election, he does not have to wait until January to take office, like other general election winners.

Rather, Talent can be sworn in the day after the current Congress adjourns, which is expected to be Friday.

The official results show Talent received 935,032 votes, or 49.8 percent of the total cast, compared to Democrat Jean Carnahan's 913,778 votes, or 48.7 percent. Libertarian Tamara Millay received 18,345 votes and Green Party candidate Daniel "digger" Romano got 10,465 votes.

Blunt also certified the results of other state races. Although some of the vote counts may have changed, there were no changes in winners from the unofficial results that had been available since Election Day.

The exact time that Talent will become a senator is a little uncertain.

If the Senate were in session, he would have been sworn in as soon as he could have appeared on the Senate floor with a copy of the election certification. But the Senate adjourned Wednesday.

Now Talent must wait for the House to also adjourn. When that happens, the congressional session will officially be over and Talent will become a senator the next day -- without the need for him to personally appear in Washington for an oath of office.

"Assuming the House adjourns (Friday) to compete the 107th Congress, he will become a senator Saturday," said Tim Wineman, financial clerk of the Senate.

That means Talent will begin getting paid as a senator, can hire staff and can move into his Washington office. There still would be no votes to cast until January.

Talent issued a statement Thursday saying, "I'm pleased that the election has been certified and I'm eager to get to work."

The 2002 election was the first under new state election laws, including a measure that allowed voters whose eligibility was questioned to cast a provisional ballot. Those ballots were to be counted only if the voters' eligibility later was verified.

Blunt said 3,603 people requested provisional ballots applications. Of those, 2,007 -- or about 56 percent -- were found to be qualified and had their votes counted. The other applications were treated as mail-in voter registrations, meaning the people will be eligible to vote in the next election.

All told, Blunt said 51 percent of registered voters actually voted in Missouri. That was up from 43 percent in 1998, the last general election without a presidential race.

Blunt said the election ran smoothly.

"We didn't have disenfranchisement of voters, and we didn't have the fraud that had plagued past elections," he said.

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Secretary of State: http://www.sos.state.mo.us