With Election Day finally here, Lucas County Board of Elections hunkers down
It’ll be a busy night for all involved — from the elections officials to the campaigns.
TOLEDO, Ohio — It’s safe to say those with the Lucas County Board of Elections have been quite busy.
“On Saturday, we processed 1,400 some people. And on Sunday, a little over a thousand, and we were only open for four hours,” said LaVera Scott, director of the Lucas County Board of Elections.
And with all the chaos that comes with any election, there was the added burden of early voting taking place at a new location: the Lucas County Shared Services building on West Sylvania Avenue. Scott says even after all the advertising that’s been done on the new location, some people were still confused as to where they’re supposed to early vote. But as of Monday, over 18,000 did apparently know where to go.
She adds that even in these busy times, there is organization to this chaos.
“Most of the things that we have to do on a day-to-day basis are business as usual. So, I mean, we have election manuals that we utilize. So there’s very rarely times that we have to contact the secretary of state’s office for anything,” Scott added.
So what about those results? Will we have them tonight? Well, here’s Scott’s response to that question.
“Hopefully, yes. And that’s one of the things that we stress in training. We can’t do anything without the results being here. I can’t, you know, snap my fingers or have a magic wand to make them appear. They do have to come from the polling locations,” Scott explained.
With Lucas County being such a large county geographically, there are some polling locations up to 40 minutes away. And that’s where election security comes in. It takes a lot of effort to get those ballots from point ‘A’ to point ‘B.’ So to ensure everyone’s vote is protected, there are plenty of security measures in place.
“There is a bipartisan process for the ballots to get transferred- taken to a substation. At that substation, there’s a sheriff, along with a bipartisan team, that brings the actual election results down to the tabulation center. So everything that we do, from the time those votes are cast, is a bipartisan team — and that’s in state law,” she assures.
The same goes for all the action back on Sylvania Avenue. A bipartisan team is even required for a task as simple as opening some doors in the building. So, needless to say, there are a multitude of checks and balances in place, making it all the more difficult to cast doubt on the results of tonight’s races.
