The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Board decides ballot issues
Both parties come together to handle irregularities in ballots
The Lorain County Board of Elections followed up with ballot questions during a meeting Nov. 14 as they decided what to do with ballot discrepancies or important information that was omitted.
Paul Adams, director of the board of elections, said first mentioned were absentee ballots without the correct identification.
“We have a handful of ballots in the absentee category, 52, that did not include the proper identification,” he said. “Of the 52 listed, 32 of those are with the incorrect ID information on the envelope.
There are 15 with no identification information on the ID envelope and five where the ID envelope was blank. Everybody who had a deficiency, we would have sent them an 11-S form to allow them to correct any deficiency. Of the ones that we sent (525 absentee ballots), 397 were returned.”
“So, we had a return rate of just over 75 percent,” Adams said. “All the people in this category (incorrect information on envelope) would have gotten the opportunity to fix, but they did not do that.”
Adams said there was also another ballot that was rejected because someone removed the stub on the ballot.
“It’s on the instruction and it’s also on the stub it
self,” he said. “The stub says ‘Do Not Remove’. A few years ago, we moved the stub from the top to the bottom to remove the number of people that would potentially do that. One out of 62,000...I wish it were zero, but moving it to the bottom has eliminated almost all of these.”
A ballot was rejected because there was a different address on the identification envelope than was on record. The address that the voter moved to was in a different precinct.
“In this case this ballot came in on election day,” he
said. “There wouldn’t have been an opportunity for this person to fix their problem. We are sending them a letter so they can update their registration address so in the next election this won’t happen.”
There were also 18 absentees without the ID envelope. Adams said those who had a return address were contacted, but did not respond.
Adams said there were 49 absentees that were rejected because they came in late.
“Forty-nine ballots were not received on time,” he said. “One placed in the
drop box after 7:30 p.m. at the close of polls. We had one that came in after election day; it had the orange bar with the secretary of state’s (barcode), but based on where it was placed, the sec of state’s barcode reader could not read it. There was also a ballot without a postmark or scan bar...and it came in after election day. Those were three of the 49. All of the others in that category just came in after the deadline, clearly had a postmark after (Nov. 2). Most of them were postmarked on Nov. 3.”
Board of Elections mem
ber Anthony Giardini, Democrat, emphasized the importance of making sure folks know the mail-in deadline.
“You can’t mail it in on the day of the election,” he said. “It has to be mailed and postmarked the day before. It’s a common mistake. 49 people didn’t get their voices heard. It’s a shame.”
Also, 40 ballots were rejected because there was no signature.
There were 401 provisional ballots for voters not registered in the state of Ohio, but Adams pointed out that the provisional ballot is also a registration form, so those individuals will be registered for the next election.
There were 61 ballots approved for provisional voters who voted in the wrong precinct but in the right polling place. The Board of Elections felt this was not the voters’ fault, and their address should have been requested by poll workers.
A ballot issue is being referred to the Lorain County Prosecutor’s Office where someone voted at a polling place in Cuyahoga County and then later voted in Lorain County.