Use of paper ballots in Valley may delay results

YOUNGSTOWN — There should be plenty of paper ballots at the polls March 4 in Mahoning and Trumbull counties for those who don’t want to cast votes on the touch-screen machines.

But the more paper ballots used, the longer the wait for the primary election results, particularly in Trumbull County.

The paper ballots are fed into optical scanner machines that tabulate the results.

In Mahoning, there are two high-speed scanners that can count 250 paper ballots a minute.

Trumbull has six scanners, but each can only scan about 400 to 500 paper ballots an hour, said Rokey Suleman, the county board of elections’ deputy director.

“We might be scanning ballots until 3:30 in the morning,” he said. That would be about 3 to 4 1/2 hours later than usual.

But that’s a worse-case scenario, Suleman said.

“We believe most will vote on the machines,” he said. “But the more paper ballots, the longer it will take.”

The results in Mahoning County should be available about 45 minutes to an hour later than average, said Thomas McCabe, the county elections board’s director.

“It’s not about being fast, it’s about being accurate,” he said.

Results in Mahoning are typically finished by about 10 p.m.

The polls, which open in Ohio at 6:30 a.m., close at 7:30 p.m.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com.