Voters may need to wait longer this year for election results

By Megan Alley
Sun Reporter

Seemingly, voters have become accustomed to knowing the outcome of an election the evening of the election, but this year, all may have to adjust their expectations.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting safety precautions, such as widespread mail-in voting, put into place to prevent the spread of the communicable virus, means that the process of counting ballots will likely take a bit longer.

To prevent the spread of COVID-19, Ohio’s 2020 presidential primary election was changed to an all-mail vote, and Election Day was moved from March 17 to April 28. 

Normally, the Clermont County Board of Elections releases results within an hour after the polls close, but this year, the results didn’t come until just before 1 a.m. on April 29.

The delay left many political candidates and campaign committee members hanging in the balance, but it wasn’t for lack of staff effort, but rather the unique voting process, Clermont County Board of Elections Director Julia Carney explained at the time.

“That was because of the number of ballots that had to be opened and hand run through our ballot scanner,” she said, adding, “When the results come back from the polls, they are electronically submitted on a thumb drive, and so we just have to put those numbers into our election management software system. With these, we had to open and run 32,500 or more ballots through the scanner, which is not something that we typically have to do on Election Day.”

Carney also noted that the board of elections ran some ballots on April 24, but that a lot of ballots were turned in closer to Election Day.

“We really couldn’t process that last batch until after 7:30 p.m.,” she had explained.

The upcoming presidential election, with anticipated higher than normal voter turnout, longer than usual lines at polling locations – caused in part by scarcities of poll workers and as well as added safety precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 – and an already overburdened United States Postal Service tasked with handling mail-in ballot materials, it’s expected that national results may not be finalized for days, maybe even weeks, after Nov. 3.

To find out how things may look locally, we talked again with Carney.

On Nov. 3 polling locations will be open from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

On election night, according to Carney, the board of elections will report initial results at 7:30 p.m., provided “all goes well.” Her department will report to the Secretary of State throughout the evening.

“They typically give us a schedule closer to election day; if they want us to report every 15 minutes, or every half-hour, or every hour,” she said. “The more populous counties, like Clermont, have in the past reported every 15 minutes, and then we update our website at the same time that we report to the Secretary of State, so those results are pretty accurate throughout the evening.”

Carney said that anyone who is standing in line at their polling location at 7:30 p.m. can vote on election day.

“So, that means the results from the polls might not get back as quickly as they would if there weren’t any lines at the polls, but being that this is a presidential election, and we have extra precautions in place, we would anticipate that there may be voters in line at 7:30 p.m.,” she added.

The board of elections will also have a lot of ballots still coming in on election day, Carney said, as people can drop off ballots directly until 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 3, and those mailing them in need to be postmarked by Nov. 2.

“So, depending on that volume, which is why we are encouraging people that when they get their ballots around their being mailed on Oct. 6 … to vote that ballot and return it to us as soon as they can,” she said.

When a ballot arrives to the board of elections, trained staff can begin processing the ballot – open the envelope, verify the identity, sort the ballots by precinct and feed the ballot into the secure ballot scanner. Carney went on to explain that the scanned votes cannot be tabulated until the polls close on election night; until then, the results are held on a memory stick and are not released, such as to not sway voters who still need to cast their ballots to vote one way or another.

“So, we will start reporting at around 7:30 p.m., but we could go late into the evening, or even the early morning hours, depending on the volume that come in at the last minute,” Carney explained of expected reporting timeline.

Additionally, to the point of mail in ballots, state law provides 10 days for a ballot postmarked by Nov. 2 to arrive to arrive at the local board of elections office, to be tabulated and considered valid.

This means that the board of elections would not be expected to provide those final numbers until Nov. 13.

Notably, while the secretary of state is set to send out applications to all registered voters in early October, some political interest groups have already started sending out applications – which Carney said is valid – to voters, resulting in some 8,000 applications already received by the Clermont County Board of Elections.

“Our numbers are up incredibly, for the amount of absentee ballots that have been submitted at this point in the election cycle,” she said.

Carney is working with both the regional and local USPS postmasters to ensure that the upcoming election, as it pertains to mail-in applications and ballots, goes as smoothly as possible.