ASHLAND — What happens when you vote in Ashland County?
Ashland County Board of Elections staff let reporters step behind the scenes recently in order for voters to get a clear picture of the process leading up to the midterm elections on Nov. 8.
“Given the climate, we thought it would be a good idea to let voters know how we do things here,” said Shannon Johnson, the county’s director of the board of elections.
The climate Johnson referred to is one fueled by distrust in the elections process, exacerbated by former President Donald Trump’s claims of rampant voter fraud after the 2020 election.
An ABC/Ipsos poll found in January that only 20% of the American public are “very confident” in the nation’s election system.
A more recent poll, conducted by the New York Times and Siena College found that 28% of voters said they had “little to no faith” in the accuracy of this year’s midterm elections.
Johnson said her office is not immune to the distrust, saying the level of scrutiny her office has been under in recent years has heightened.
Since the beginning of the year, her office has received over 30 public records requests, the majority of which are about the 2020 election.
Requesters asked for a slew of documents and materials from the 2020 election, including copies of every ballot, voter machine reports, voter records, polling materials and more.
In just the past few months, the board has received at least seven requests asking them to retain records from the 2020 election past their federally-mandated 22-month retention period, which ended in September.
Before the 2020 election, Ashland’s board received “a minimum amount” of requests, Johnson said.
“We’ve never had these sort of numbers before,” she said.
The majority of the sometimes identical requests that the Ashland board received this year were also sent to every other board in Ohio.
None of the requests are coming from Ashland County residents, she said.
Instead, requests came from Cincinnati, Massachusetts, New Jersey and from people who identified themselves as “Ohio Constituents.”
Johnson hopes an explanation of how her office processes votes will foster trust.
Early voting
Voting early in Ohio starts on Sept. 23, when military and overseas absentee voters can cast ballots.
Early in-person voting, early voting by mail and other absentee voting begins Oct. 12.
Every early ballot cast first requires an application, which offers a paper trail of verification once those ballots are returned to the office.
When absentee and provisional ballots come in to the office, the staff works to verify information — making sure that information matches the information found on the applications.
So far, Ashland’s board of elections have mailed out around 3,000 ballots and have received back more than half, said Ashland County Board of Elections Deputy Director Amanda Jones.
The office has seen around 1,700 in-person votes cast.
Out of all those votes, 13 have been deemed as “problem ballots,” which are tallies that either have missing identification information, missing signatures or other clerical errors.
Jones said 12 out of 13 of the problem ballots are currently missing signatures. Those voters will get a letter, providing that person a chance to fix the ballot.
Election Day: poll workers, locations
Ashland County relies on 120 poll workers at 14 polling locations. The office looks for 60 registered Republicans and Democrats to fill those positions, typically asking prior workers to come back.
The office still needs three poll workers to have that solid base of employees, but Sharon Risner, the office’s clerk, said she’d like to hire up to three extra to fill in just in case they’re needed on election day.
Workers are paid $106.50 for the day and are trained prior to the election.
The office recently reduced the number of polling locations from 19 to 14. To check on where to vote, click here.
Machines and tabulation
On Election Day, all ballots cast are tabulated by using a thumb drive compatible with the voting machine, which is technically a scanner.
Each voting machine, or scanner — the county has 37 — comes stocked with one of these thumb drives, which are inventoried by the office separately. When the time comes to tabulate them, the thumb drive is plugged into the “tabulator,” which is just an offline computer, that essentially scans each ballot digitally.
Once scanned, those images are transferred to another one-use thumb drive, Johnson said. When downloaded, the thumb drive is plugged into another computer that is used to report results to the Ohio Secretary of State, and then to the county’s election results page.
“Ashland is a top-of-the-hour reporting county,” Johnson said. “So the top of every hour, we’re required to electronically submit our results to the Secretary of State.”
Once all ballots from every voting precinct are reported, you have the unofficial total.
Following Election Day, the office processes provisional ballots, which are cast when there are problems with registration.
The office can receive absentee late ballots after Election Day, too. By law, late ballots can only be processed if received within 10 days after the election.
Official numbers, therefore, are published up to 13 days after Election Day. After the official numbers are released, the office is required to conduct a post-election audit, where staffers and board members count 5% of the vote total during an open meeting.
Johnson said the only time changes are made to the official numbers is when there is an error made by human beings.
What about voter fraud?
When it comes to instances of voter fraud in Ashland County, it happens — but not often.
In 2020, the office received a provisional ballot from the Ashland County Jail. The office does not count provisionals on Election Day. So when it came time to investigate provisionals, staff noticed the person’s name appeared on a ballot cast on Election Day, too.
“So we called the jail. He was incarcerated. He wasn’t out on Election Day to vote,” said Amanda Jones, the office’s deputy director.
Later, it was discovered the inmate’s father, Mark Owens Sr., had checked out his son’s driver’s license and used it to vote at an Ashland precinct on Election Day.
He was sentenced to probation in May 2021, according to court records.
In 2021, there were 117 cases of possible voter fraud handed over to the state’s attorney general’s office from county elections offices across the state. Of those, 104 were illegally registered and 13 actually cast illegal ballots that were ultimately counted.
One of those cases happened in Ashland County, when someone illegally registered to vote in the 2020 election cycle.
Ashland County Prosecutor Chris Tunnell said the attorney general’s office referred the case to him, and then Tunnell referred the case to local law enforcement to investigate.
