How Ohio counts voter's ballots on Election Day
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Voters in Ohio will likely know the projected winners of key statewide races before the end of Election Day on Tuesday.
While some neighboring states do not allow election officials to process absentee votes before Election Day, county boards of elections in Ohio are permitted to begin readying early and absentee ballots to be counted before Tuesday.
Those boards of elections could have begun that process on Oct. 8, the day early in-person voting began in Ohio. However, Ohio law says those ballots cannot be officially tabulated until after poll locations close across the state at 7:30 p.m. on Election Day.
After the polls close, officials are required to upload the first batch of absentee results by 8 p.m. Once results are uploaded, they will also begin to appear on NBC4i.com here.
After each boards of elections uploads its first round, it will update results either every half hour or hour, depending on the county. Athens, Cuyahoga, Delaware, Fairfield, Franklin, Hamilton, Licking, Miami, Ross, Warren and other counties report at each half hour beginning at 8:15 p.m. Ashland, Defiance, Guernsey, Logan, Pickaway and other counties report at the top of each hour.
The election night results are part of an "unofficial canvas," meaning they are the projected, but not finalized, results. The boards of elections can begin the "official canvas" on Nov. 11, and must complete the process by 2 p.m. on Nov. 20.
Ohio is "the gold standard for elections administration" because the state's system is run at the local level by 88 county boards of elections who are each overseen by two Republicans and two Democrats, according to Secretary of State Frank LaRose.
Ohio's voting machines are under bipartisan surveillance, and they're kept in storage systems with dual locks that require a Republican key and a Democratic key to open, LaRose said. The state also boasts a bipartisan process called logic and accuracy testing, a battery of tests conducted by Republican and Democratic election officials to make sure that every single piece of equipment works properly before it's deployed to voting locations.
In the secretary's office, they have a bipartisan board that certifies every voting system in the state. LaRose said this starts with guaranteeing that no voting machine can ever be connected to the internet -- no Wi-Fi, no Bluetooth, no LAN connection, strictly air gapped and not accessible to the outside world.
"Our bipartisan teams in each county also conduct what we call a post-election audit. This means hand counting the paper ballots to compare them to the election day results and assuring accuracy," said LaRose. "During the time I've been in this office, we've had over 99.9% accuracy when you compare the electronic results to those hard-copy paper ballots."
There are many resources on the secretary's website that will make your trip to the polls easier: