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Ballot Issues Lead to Prolonged Discussions at Summit County Board of Elections

Sean Gaffney (L) and Kevin Moreland watch as absentee ballots are processed through a ballot scanner in the late evening of election night at the Summit County Board of Elections building, Akron, Ohio.
Carter Adams
/
WKSU
Sean Gaffney (L) and Kevin Moreland watch as absentee ballots are processed through a ballot scanner in the late evening of election night at the Summit County Board of Elections building, Akron, Ohio.

Summit County Board of Elections members were deadlocked for a time over how to handle some disputed ballots last night.

The four-member board split 2 to 2 on some ballots.

Board chairman Bill Rich says there were hundreds of ballots that the board had to look over for a range of issues—from how bubbles were filled in--to how envelopes were completed on absentee ballots.

"We had to decide whether to authorize the remake of the ballot or to just scan them as-is and let the scanner count whatever it can count and not count what it's not able to count, so those were the kinds of decisions we were making," Rich said.

He says matters were resolved eventually.

“It’s not unusual. To some extent it happens every election. What was a little different the discussion was more prolonged than usual.”

Voters whose ballots had problems have ten days to correct them.

Rich says overall election day went well with fewer problems than they’ve seen in previous presidential elections.

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Carter is a senior journalism student at Kent State University and multimedia intern with WKSU. His concentration is in documentary photography, focusing on political unrest and working-class issues. He has worked on stories both local and abroad, having covered the 2016 Republican National Convention and the aftermath of Hurricane Irma in the Florida Keys.
A Northeast Ohio native, Sarah Taylor graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio where she worked at her first NPR station, WMUB. She began her professional career at WCKY-AM in Cincinnati and spent two decades in television news, the bulk of them at WKBN in Youngstown (as Sarah Eisler). For the past three years, Sarah has taught a variety of courses in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Kent State, where she is also pursuing a Master’s degree. Sarah and her husband Scott, have two children. They live in Tallmadge.