The expected increase in early voting this election season includes a unprecedented scenario: that it delays the official results in the presidential election for weeks.

Elections officials downplayed the likelihood of this happening, but the scenario could result from a combination of the following conditions: an expected increase in provisional voting — a special type of vote that gives election workers extra time to confirm a voter’s eligibility — a presidential election that hinges on Ohio’s 18 electoral college votes, and a down-to-the-wire presidential race in Ohio.

The result: The winner of the race for the White House wouldn’t be known until three weeks after the election.

“A lot of crazy things would have to happen,” said Aaron Ockerman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Elections Officials, in assessing the likelihood of this happening.

“Well it’s certainly a possibility,” said Lynn Kincaid, director of the Butler County Board of Elections. “But I really don’t think so.”

Elections experts weren’t so quick to dismiss the scenario.

The potential chain of events begins with Republican Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s decision to send out absentee ballot application to 7 million Ohioans, the first-ever such mass-mailing.

Elections observers said that as a result of the expected increase in early voting, more people than usual may either forget to return or lose their absentee ballots, or decide not to vote early after all.

Those voters could still get their absentee ballots counted on Election Night if they or a direct family member were to hand-deliver them to their county elections board office.

But if they were to go to their normal poll places to vote on Election Day, poll workers would require them to cast a provisional ballot. Poll workers can’t accept absentee ballots.

Under Ohio law, provisional votes can’t be opened until Nov. 17. The final deadline to count them isn’t until Nov. 27, three weeks after the election.

In a close presidential race that could hinge on the outcome in Ohio, the 1o-day wait before provisional ballots can be counted could be as dramatic as the 2000 presidential election in Florida, the setting of infamously confusing “butterfly ballots” and the resulting flurry of legal challenges, said Dan Tokaji, an Ohio State University professor and voting law expert.

As of a week ago, more than 800,000 of the 1.4 million absentee ballots requested across the state still hadn’t been returned. The number of outstanding absentee ballots will almost certainly decrease as Election Day nears and voters make up their minds or stop procrastinating, election observers said.

Mark Caleb Smith, director of the Center for Political Studies at Cedarville University, said in an email there is a “strong” possibility that many of the voters who requested absentee ballots may instead decide to go to the polls, resulting in a “very high number of provisional ballots.”

“If the election is close, this could disrupt Election Day results,” Smith said. “At minimum, we may not know who wins the contests in Ohio for quite some time. At maximum, voters across the country may not know, for quite some time, who won the presidential election if Ohio’s electoral college votes prove to be decisive.”

Provisional ballots happen every election, often because of name changes or if a voter moves after the registration deadline.

Tokaji said the odds are against 2012 being a repeat of 2000, when the the election hinged on the outcome of the Florida legal challenges. But if it does happen again, “it’s likely to happen right here in Ohio,” he said.

As far as odds go: A computer simulation run by New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight blog projected a 50-50 chance that the election will come down to Ohio, according to an Internet post published on Tuesday.

Husted hasn’t projected whether his decision to mail out absentee ballot applications will result in a delayed presidential election outcome, said spokesman Matt McClellan.

“We’re confident the election process is going to run smoothly,” McClellan said.

In the 2008 general election, voters cast 206,000 provisional ballots in Ohio. But counting them went mostly unnoticed since Obama easily gained enough electoral college votes to defeat Republican challenger U.S. Sen. John McCain. Obama also beat McCain in Ohio by more than 262,000 votes.

About one-fifth of Ohio’s provisional votes were disqualified in 2008. The most common reason — about half of the time — was that the voter wasn’t registered in Ohio, according to the Secretary of State’s office.

An estimated 8,000 provisional voters were disqualified from voting in 2008 because they went to the wrong precinct. But a Columbus judge ruled Thursday that those votes should be counted this year.

Ellis Jacobs, a Dayton-based attorney and voting rights advocate, said sometimes provisional ballots can be disqualified for technical reasons that have nothing to do with the voter’s eligibility. That can include not filling out the provisional voting form correctly or not signing the envelope the provisional ballot goes in.

“I always tell people … you’d rather not cast a provisional ballot,” Jacobs said. “It’s much better to cast a regular ballot.”