The Summit County Clerk’s Office is still working to count ballots a week after Election Day to meet the Nov. 19 canvassing deadline.
A little more than 23,300 ballots have been counted so far, according to a report released Monday by County Clerk Eve Furse.
“I’m really hoping we’ll be through the vast majority of it this week,” Furse said Monday. “We have three of our four full-time staff members here, and then in addition to that, we have another five poll workers who are temporarily helping.”
For a ballot to be counted, Furse and her staff compare the voter’s signature to another signature on file — typically from the voter’s driver’s license — and begin the verification process. If a signature is rejected, then Furse has two days to send the voter an affidavit. That needs to be returned to the Clerk’s Office before Nov. 18 for the vote to be counted.
Once the signatures match, election officials open the envelopes and run the ballots through a tabulator. Each process is documented with signatures as well as dates and times. At least two people always need to be present, too. Those results are then taken to the Summit County Council for the official canvassing Tuesday, Nov. 19.
“We provide the County Council with a breakdown of how many people are registered to vote, how many people voted, how many votes we disqualified and why,” Furse said. “And then they have the opportunity to ask questions at that point or to look into anything that they might have concerns about. Once they become satisfied that these are the results, then they will approve them and that data is sent up the chain to the lieutenant governor’s office. That’s what makes it official.”
With a total of 29,700 registered voters, Summit County so far has an overall voter turnout of around 79%. However, Furse expects that number to increase in the coming days.
“In 2022, which was a federal election year but not a presidential election, we had about a 71%, 72% turnout,” she said. “The last presidential election in 2020 was probably an abnormality in some ways because of COVID, but that turnout was about 92%, so I think we’re going to be pretty on par with that, which I think is a pretty good turnout.”