What happens next in OH-15?

Updated - Unless a candidate concedes, no one may know the winner of the 15th Congressional District race for weeks, as various legal dates come and go before a binding result is reached.

Steve Stivers (R-Columbus) is 393 votes ahead of Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Columbus) after more ballots were counted by the Franklin County Board of Elections last week. The board is responsible for tabulating results for the race because it belongs to the most populous county of the three that make up the district: Franklin, Union and Madison.

However, neither side is going anywhere because this narrow result could change when thousands of provisional ballots, Tuesday-postmarked absentee ballots, and error-plagued absentee ballots, are counted by the elections board. The board has until Friday, Nov. 14 to do so.

When the results of these ballots are added to the unofficial vote canvass, we still will not have an official winner, said Ohio State University Mortiz College of Law’s Nathan Cemenska. Official
certification  will come from  Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner after her office’s official canvass of results.

It’s possible that Kilroy or Stivers would take a commanding lead from the ballots yet to be counted and then one would concede the race. If neither does, a recount would be likely.

After Nov. 14, the county elections board will send its abstract results to the secretary of state’s office for certification. The secretary of state may begin to certify the results of the race once it receives the board's totals, but no later than Nov. 25. After the secretary of state announces the results, candidates will have 5 days to file a recount pplication with the secretary of state, or else the result will be final.

If the elections board submits its results as late as Nov. 25, we may not know whether there will be a recount until Nov. 30, taking the race into December.

If one candidate is losing by less than 0.5 percent of the secretary of state’s announced certified result, an automatic recount funded by taxpayers will occur. The losing candidate doesn’t have to ask for this recount to occur but may file paperwork with the secretary of state to waive their right to a recount, Cemenska said.

If the losing margin is more than 0.5 percent, a campaign may file a candidate-requested recount. The campaign would pay the board of elections ahead of time for the cost of the recount, Cemenska said.