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Franklin’s win in Warren called ‘historic’
Photo
Doug Franklin
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Over several decades, four black men have run for Warren mayor.
Doug Franklin, who won Tuesday’s primary election over Jim Graham in the Democratic primary, is apparently going to be the first to be elected.
Judi Toles, longtime Trumbull County Board of Elections employee, said the three previous black candidates were Bob Dawson, Joe Williams and Fred Harris. Dawson and Harris were safety-service directors like Franklin when they ran for mayor. Williams was council president.
The county board of elections still must count 158 provisional ballots for Warren and certify Tuesday’s election results at a board of elections meeting at 3 p.m. May 24.
Provisional ballots are cast by voters who move into a voting district no more than 30 days before an election, change their name (typically through marriage) without notifying the board of elections or fail to provide a valid form of identification when they go to the polls.
The last chance someone will have to challenge Franklin in November will be anyone filing by Aug. 29 to run as a write-in candidate, though none of those events is likely to prevent Franklin from assuming office Jan. 1, election officials say. Franklin has no Republican challenger in November.
Since Franklin won the election by nearly 900 votes (3,632 to 2,738), the 158 provisional ballots left to count won’t determine who becomes mayor.
Warren school board member Bob Faulkner called Tuesday’s election “historic.”
“It’s a signal that the residents believe an African American can lead this city into the future,” Faulkner said. “It’s all people. This crowd shows it,” Faulkner said at Franklin’s victory party at Enzo’s Restaurant.
“It was about Doug Franklin, not about black of white,” Faulkner said.
Meanwhile, the Trumbull elections board was pleased with the improved efficiency of the high-speed paper-ballot scanner used for the first time Tuesday.
Election results were final at 9:45 p.m. Tuesday, which is about 20 minutes earlier than the last comparable election, in May 2009.
Stephanie Penrose of the elections board said the scanner reduced the time it took to read the ballots by half — roughly five hours compared with close to 12 before.
Most of the scanning is done in advance of election night, though a tabulation of that scanning is not allowed until after the polls close.
Tuesday’s turnout was 19,209 voters in Trumbull County, or 24.8 percent of the registered voters, which is about what the elections board predicted.
There were 130 voting precincts open Tuesday out of 238.