Official results catapult Cole to third

The results are never official until they count every ballot, and the final count certified today shook up the order of finish in the third- through fifth-place finishes on Cincinnati City Council.

It's a mostly academic point -- unless you're Laketa Cole, whose 815 additional votes brought her up to third place, from fifth.

"It was important to me that I finish where I did last time," said Cole, a Democrat who came in third in 2003. "The one through four spots are all incumbents. I had a feeling I would move up in provisional ballots. They tend to favor African-American candidates and incumbents."

Republican Leslie Ghiz dropped from third to fifth, while Democrat David Crowley hung on to fourth place. Ghiz, a 35-year-old Hyde Park lawyer, is unlikely to complain, though -- she said after the election that City Council races, like the bar exam, are graded on a pass-fail basis.

The official results include overseas absentee, provisional and walk-in ballots not counted on election night. Here are the final vote totals, as certified by the Hamilton County Board of Elections:

	New rank		Old rank		Candidate	Votes
	1		1		John Cranley	35,603
	2		2		Jim Tarbell	32,392
	3		5		Laketa Cole	29,966
	4		4		David C Crowley	29,856
	5		3		Leslie Ghiz	29,758
	6		6		Jeff Berding	28,344
	7		7		Chris Monzel	27,931
	8		8		Chris Bortz	27,304
	9		9		Cecil Thomas	27,091
	10		10		Sam Malone	25,838
	11		11		Christopher Smitherman	24,642
	12		12		Damon Lynch III	22,556
	13		13		Wendell Young	21,505
	14		14		Eve Bolton	19,729
	15		15		John Eby	16,271
	16		16		Samantha Herd	14,306
	17		17		Nick Spencer	9,462
	18		18		Paul McGhee	5,407
	19		19		Gerry Kraus	4,719
	20		20		William S. Matthews II	3,915
	21		21		Robert J. Wilking	3,762
	22		22		Ishaq Nadir	3,208
	23		23		Eric Wilson	3,082
	24		24		Michael Earl Patton	2,770
	25		25		Curtis Wells	2,482
	26		26		Robert Wilson	2,319
	27		27		Ronnie Stallworth	2,271
	28		28		Bill Barron	1,849
	29		29		Bennie Green	1,800
	30		30		Victor Phillips	1,695
	31		31		Antonio Hodge	1,276