Technical problems struck the most populated county in the State of Ohio on Election Day forcing county election authorities to order the use of paper ballot books.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office, the top election official in Ohio, made a statement early Tuesday that the board of elections “will be using its backup paper poll books to check in voters today…This is why we have contingency plans in place and the process is working. We decided to go with the backup paper poll books to ensure that one voter can only cast one vote.”
Paper pollbooks are required in every county. See our directive 2020-11, issued in July. https://t.co/zVtvlJ8rDk pic.twitter.com/3dsSpUZtzV
— Ohio Secretary of State Comms Team (@SecLaRoseComms) November 3, 2020
A spokesman for the Secretary of State warned that voters may have to wait in longer lines to vote.
“It’s important to note that this does not impact voting machines in any way, and only modifies how voters are checked in,” a spokesperson for La Rose tweeted. “Secretary LaRose directed every board of elections to have paper poll books as a contingency plan to ensure the integrity of the system and so no voter may vote twice. It will not impact the security or accuracy of today’s vote.”
The director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, Ed Leonard, told reporters, “We can’t guarantee all the data would be there for all the most recent absentee activity.”
This morning we learned that the Franklin County Board of Elections was not able to upload all early in-person voting data into their electronic check-in system. Because of this, they are shifting to paper pollbooks to check-in voters today. 1/3
— Ohio Secretary of State Comms Team (@SecLaRoseComms) November 3, 2020
Approximately 350,982 people already cast their ballots in early voting in Franklin County via mail-in orabsentee voting.
The county has roughly 833,000 registered voters, according to the paper.
Ohio is a critical battleground state this election cycle. And while Franklin County went for Clinton in 2016 – 59 percent to 33 percent for President Trump, the President carried Ohio
by more than 8 percentage points.
