Valley boards prepare for voting option

By Ed Runyan

Paper-ballot votes are added after the electronic vote totals are tabulated.

WARREN — Changes ordered by the state to allow voters to use paper ballots instead of electronic voting machines may set back results by several hours on election night, Trumbull County elections officials say.

Jodi Fiorenzo Dibble, deputy director of the Trumbull County Board of Elections, said she thinks workers could still be working until 4 or 5 a.m., with final results still in doubt until then.

Joyce Kale-Pesta, deputy director of the Mahoning County Board of Elections, predicted no significant delay, however, saying she believes her office’s election-night strategies will make it possible to have final results between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m.

To prepare for the possible late night, the Trumbull elections board decided Tuesday to close the office at noon the following day, Nov. 5. That will allow officials to work through the night of Nov. 4 if necessary and leave around noon Nov. 5.

One of the biggest changes voters will see this year at the polls in Trumbull and Mahoning counties is that there will be two lines at each polling place — one for those who want to vote on electronic touch-screen voting machines and another line for paper voting.

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner ordered the separate voting areas for elections boards that have electronic voting machines.

Counting paper ballots on a scanner takes longer than uploading a memory card from an electronic voting machine, Fiorenzo Dibble said, adding that paper ballots received from polling locations on election night are added to voting totals last — after the electronic results are tabulated.

Kelly Pallante, Trumbull elections board director, said the paper ballots can delay results because some ballots contain voters’ written marks that have to be analyzed by elections board members before a determination can be made as to the voter’s intent.

Columbiana County doesn’t use electronic voting equipment and is not subject to the two-line requirement, so the workers there are not expecting any significant changes in the way the board operates this election, said Kim Meek, elections board director.

She expects results to be available by 1 a.m., she said.

Fiorenzo Dibble said there is no way of knowing how many voters on election night will choose to vote by paper ballot because separate lines for paper and electronic voters have never been used in Trumbull before.

But human nature suggests that if the lines are longer for electronic voting machines than paper, voters will select the paper voting, Fiorenzo Dibble said, adding that such a condition might cause a large increase in voting on paper ballots.

During the primary in the spring, the Trumbull elections board experienced a 57 percent turnout of registered voters and worked until 2:30 a.m. to complete election results with limited paper voting, Fiorenzo Dibble said.

With a turnout of 80 to 85 percent predicted for the general election, there could be many more paper ballots to count, she added.

Electronic voting machine results may be available by midnight, as usual, but adding the paper results to them could take hours, she said.

Some races — including the county’s vote for president — might be too close to call until the paper ballots are added, she noted.

There are relatively few close political races this November in Trumbull, but there will be dozens of school levies and government levies on the ballot that could have close vote totals, Fiorenzo Dibble said.