OH-15: Recounts unlikely before Thanksgiving

Don't expect to hear if there will be a recount until after Thanksgiving in the 15th Congressional District race.

The board of elections for Madison County, one of three making up the district, will not release its vote counts to the secretary of state before the deadline of Nov. 25. If election boards finish counts before that day they can submit them to the secretary of state, which would then begin officially certifying the election.

Candidates have five days following official certification of election results to ask for a recount. 

Madison County Board of Elections Director Timothy Ward said the board will need all of the time legally allowed to finish counting a variety of ballots. Neither the election boards of Madison, Union or Franklin Counties will be able to count thousands of provisional ballots until at least Friday morning, a federal judge ruled Monday.

Even so, the board of elections must check signatures on provisional and absentee ballots, examine over votes and re-process absentee ballots with errors that have been corrected, Ward said.

"We're already working Saturdays and Sundays and evenings," he said.

As for the over votes, Ward said the board was told by the secretary of state that it must count some types of over votes. Specifically, those voters who wrote in a candidate's name and voted for that same candidate by filling in a bubble must be counted as a single vote for that candidate, Ward said. When the over vote ballots were processed by machines on Election Day, it gave voters the option of accepting the ballot with the given over vote or letting them correct their mistakes. Ward said the board is comply with the secretary of state's order to undo the over vote in this specific circumstance and count it as a single vote.