Some voters traveling to polling locations had to weather some unexpected challenges yesterday.
Flooding on the roads near a polling station in Bern Township could have prevented voters from reaching the polls and threatened their safety, said Debbie Quivey, director of the Athens County Board of Elections. Because of weather conditions, polls were relocated from the Bern Township Building to the Mount Herman Brethren Church on state Route 550.
Other places concerned about possible floods included Amesville Village and Ames Township, Quivey said.
Election boards statewide were concerned about the weather, said Patrick Gallaway, spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.
We wanted to make sure that we had the ability to switch voting locations at the last minute
he said. Brunner's office took extra precautions for an ice storm in western Ohio and called in State Highway Patrol deputies for assistance. In Athens County, the Athens County Board of Elections became a provisional polling location with Brunner's permission for voters who were not able to make it to the new Bern Township polling location on state Route 550.
Ohio law does not have procedures for moving a polling station because of emergency circumstances, according to Jefferson County court documents.
A total of 2,312 absentee, provisional and 17-year-olds' ballots were cast during the election, Brooks said. These votes will be included in the official final count, which will be out on March 27; all absentee ballots will be accounted for on March 10, she said.
About 41 percent of the 41,635 registered voters in Athens County cast ballots in yesterday's election, according to the Athens County Board of Elections. Of the 16,934 ballots, about 80 percent were from Democrats, about 20 percent were Republican and less than one percent were nonpartisan voters. This is a 10 percent increase from the 2004 primary voter turnout, in which only 31 percent of registered voters voted in Athens County.
Despite less than half of the registered voters in Athens County hitting the polls, Aundrea Carpenter-Colvin, with the Athens County Board of Elections, felt that voter turn out was very good.
There were lines (at the polls) she said. Everyone was busy all the time.
Another problem with polling locations yesterday involved precincts 1.4, 1.5 and 2.2, all of which included student voters who were meant to vote at The Convo. These locations were changed because of yesterday's Ohio University basketball game.
The Board of Elections found out about this location conflict early enough that they were able to get one of them moved and could inform affected voters, Quivey said.
Election day ran smoothly overall, said Penny Brooks, the deputy director of the Athens County Board of Elections.The earlier concerns about having enough Republican and nonpartisan poll workers did not become problems.
Voting machines were tested earlier this year for security vulnerabilities, and because of this Brunner wanted to switch to optical scan ballots instead of paper. The optical-scan ballots were only showing part of the ballots on some machines in the state, Gallaway said.
The back-up paper ballots came in handy he said.
Brooks took the usual measures to secure the ballot machines in Athens County, testing memory cards to make sure they could not be overwritten before being installed in poll booths.
In Lake and Trumbull counties, two bomb threats were reported and handled very well by the county election boards, Gallaway said.
' Angie Weaver contributed to this report
17
Archives
Libby Cunningham
