Errors affect levy issue, House race

Human error is to blame for the latest election problems in Mahoning County.
By DAVID SKOLNICK
VINDICATOR POLITICS WRITER
Errors counting votes in Mahoning County changed the outcome of a Sebring park levy and impacted a closely contested state House race.
County elections board employees failed to initially detect that no votes were counted in Sebring Precinct 5, located at Copeland Oaks, a large retirement center in the village.
The precinct registered no votes because a poll worker delivered the wrong voting cartridge to the elections board, said Thomas McCabe, board director.
Instead of the cartridge with the vote tally from the precinct, the worker gave the elections board a cartridge used to activate the touch-screen voting machines, McCabe said. That cartridge contained no votes.
Because election workers were counting vote totals from the county's 312 precincts and there were other problems with tallying votes, the Sebring Precinct 5 problem wasn't immediately discovered, McCabe said.
When votes at the elections board were counted, a 1-mill, five-year additional recreation levy for the village lost 468-457. But after Precinct 5 votes were counted, the levy won 628-493.
Also affected
The Precinct 5 no-vote issue also impacted the 61st Ohio House District Republican primary.
The 61st District takes in the southern portion of Mahoning County as well as portions of Stark and Tuscarawas counties and all of Carroll County.
Unofficial results for the seat showed Brant Luther of Alliance beating Randy Pope of Alliance by 10 votes.
But when the Precinct 5 votes were included, Pope pulled ahead of Luther by one vote.
Pope's lead didn't hold up for long.
While double-checking results from the county's 312 precincts, election board workers discovered Thursday that the votes from Springfield Precinct 8 were counted twice, McCabe said.
Pope won that precinct by 11 votes. When the board took away the double-count votes, it left Pope once again trailing Luther by 10 votes.
When told of the discovery of the first mistake that put him in the lead, Pope said he understood that people make errors, and didn't discount the possibility that further mistakes would be detected.
Little did he realize another mistake would happen so quickly. He wasn't as forgiving the second time around.
"Who knows what will happen next?" he said. "What's wrong with Mahoning County?"
Luther said he wishes this process would end already and not drag on.
The winner of this primary faces Democrat Mark D. Okey of Carrollton in November.
Not over
Luther and Pope realize that even if no other mistakes are detected, this process is far from over.
Each of the district's four counties have to count about 100 or so provisional ballots. Those are ballots cast by people who moved days before the primary.
Elections boards must wait at least 10 days after the primary and no later than 15 days to begin verifying the eligibility of provisional voters.
After that, it is quite likely that an automatic recount will occur.
Automatic recounts occur if the margin of victory is 0.5 percent or less. Luther's unofficial margin of victory is less than 0.5 percent.
The entire process could take about a month.
"I thought this would be easy, but it wasn't," said Joyce Kale-Pesta, Mahoning's deputy elections director.
Other problems
This is the latest problem for Mahoning County from Tuesday's primary.
The main problem was poll workers in about 25 to 30 precincts had trouble closing voting machines.
Elections board employees had incorrectly trained some poll workers last month about how to close polls on the touch-screen voting systems that had a paper audit trail for the first time, McCabe said. The training was based on manuals provided by Election Systems & amp; Software, the county's voting machine vendor, he said.
Another problem in Mahoning was counting absentee ballots. The county uses paper ballots counted by optical scanner machines for absentee votes.
The county's central voting system machine didn't recognize the software used on one of the two optical scanners. It took about an hour to rectify that problem.
skolnick@vindy.com