It's Election Day: Here's the latest on turnout and voting machine glitches
Dan Horn
Voters in Greater Cincinnati encountered long lines and some voting machine problems Tuesday as they cast ballots in one of the most anticipated midterm elections in years.
Voter turnout in Hamilton County, the region's largest and most competitive county, approached 55 percent in the final hour polls were open, topping the total turnout in any midterm election since at least 1994.
Election officials had predicted turnout would be on the high side, at least for a midterm election year. The numbers for early absentee voting, by mail and in person, were up across the state.
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted said more than 884,000 Ohioans had cast absentee ballots by mail this election and almost 430,000 had cast an absentee ballot early in person.
The statewide mail-in total is 23 percent higher than in the 2014 midterms and the in-person total is almost three times the 146,000 ballots cast in 2014.
Though final numbers weren't immediately available, turnout in Hamilton County was the highest since the Republican wave of 1994 gave the GOP control of the House and sent Cincinnati's Steve Chabot to Congress for the first time.
The higher turnout meant some voters dealt with long lines and delays, which were exacerbated in the early hours of voting in Hamilton County when voting machines unexpectedly rejected ballots that had not been completely filled out.
Reports of problems arose in Blue Ash, Colerain Township, Hyde Park, Walnut Hills, downtown Cincinnati, Monfort Heights and other locations.
Hamilton County elections officials said the machines functioned properly, but voters and poll workers were confused by a change in the system that alerted voters if they had "under voted," or left some races on their ballots blank. To submit their ballots, voters needed to take an additional step of pressing the "cast ballot" button on their screens, asserting they intended not to vote all of the races.
Board of Elections Director Sherry Poland said poll workers were told to stand near the scanning machines at all polling locations to assist voters with the change.
Poland said the rejections for under voting came as a surprise because the machines were not supposed to be programmed to flag incomplete ballots and had never done so before. She said elections officials are trying to figure out how that happened.
"It was not our plan to notice for under voting," she said.
Despite the mistake, she said, the ballots will be counted as they always have been. "It does not affect the counting of the ballot," Poland said.
Despite reassurances from elections officials, some voters expressed irritation with the delays and concern about what the glitch could mean for their ballots. Some voters said they saw people completing their ballots, even though they had originally intended to leave some races blank.
"Virtually everyone who was trying to scan was getting errors," said Greg Witzgall, who voted at the West Fork Library in Monfort Heights. "People were then forced to vote on candidates that they had no intention of voting on."
In Walnut Hills, Michael Jahne said poll workers were explaining how to bypass the "improperly marked ballot" message without altering the ballot.
"Staff indicated that they are still being counted," he wrote in an email to The Enquirer. "But it is concerning nonetheless."
Poll monitors from the left-leaning Common Cause said they received dozens of complaints in the early hours of voting from people who were told they had to fill out the entire ballot or had to wait while poll workers figured out what to do.
"It's really systemic. We keep getting calls about ballots being rejected," said Greg Harris, a Common Cause monitor. "A lot of poll workers were caught off guard."
Harris said Board of Elections officials have made a good faith effort to resolve the confusion, but he said it appears poll worker training wasn't adequate.
Board officials responded to the complaints with a statement Tuesday morning, saying the under voting alert was turned on to provide voters additional information and to give them a chance to "review the ballot and make changes" if they wished.
They said absentee ballots sent by mail or submitted in person by early voters will not be affected by the change in the system. Different, high-speed scanners are used to count those ballots, they said, so incomplete ballots would not be flagged or rejected.
The polls closed Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. in Ohio and 6 p.m. in Kentucky and most of Indiana. Voters chose candidates for the House, Senate and a host of state and local races.
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When the votes are counted, some of the big questions politicians and pundits have been debating for months will finally be answered. Will there be a "blue wave?" Can Republicans hold the Senate, the House or both? What will President Donald Trump say about it all on Twitter?
According to polls, Democratic and Republican voters are both motivated by their views on President Trump. He's not on the ballot, but he's very much at the center of this election.
Trump has held rallies across the country, including in Greater Cincinnati, in recent weeks to rally support for GOP candidates. Democrats, meanwhile, have used outrage over the president and his policies to drive their voters to the polls.
Turnout in the May primary indicated voters, particularly Democrats, were motivated. For the first time since 1982, more Democrats voted in a midterm primary than Republicans.
Sarah Brookbank contributed to this report