Election Day in 2021 basically ended smoothly in the three-county area, but some minor problems appeared in Wayne County.

According to a press release issued later by the Election Commission, late-night technical issues in the two electoral districts-Orrville City 1 and Rittman City 2-caused the Election Commission to postpone the final number report until early Wednesday morning. morning.

This problem arose after routine testing of each voting machine before the election. During this process, a test file is uploaded to each drive that stores election results.

Unofficial results: The 2021 election is over, we have all the results

The statement explained that when these drives needed to be collected, one such test file was kept on two of the drives, one for each affected area. This file prevents immediate upload of the results. 

"Once the test files are cleared, the tabulation is completed without problems," the statement read. "After the Election Committee approved it at a special meeting on Wednesday morning, it immediately tabulated the results of the election day and posted it to www.waynecountyoh.gov."

If the results cannot be uploaded, each voter verification paper record of the vote can be used as a failsafe. According to the statement, this is not needed.

The board of directors stated that it will modify the logic and accuracy procedures and tests before the election to prevent similar delays in the future.

Another technical problem encountered by Wayne County is Congress Town. The electronic voting book failed, and the staff had to rely on the physical book to view and maintain voter registration information.

The key issue of the Worcester Council election: Knapick, Reynolds, and Miles won seats in the Worcester City Council. No one opposed Woden

Despite technical failures, nearly 20% of the residents of Wayne County from 67 electoral districts reported to polling stations across the county on Tuesday. 

Julie Starr, director of the Wayne County Election Commission, said that for non-annual elections that do not have a large number of votes like the presidential election, the turnout rate is expected to be lower.

Voter turnout:Local school board races take the spotlight as voters hit the polls on Tuesday

In contrast, the turnout rate for absentee voting and provisional voting on election day in the 2020 general election was 76%. 

In 2019, nearly 30% of registered voters in Wayne County voted.

In Ashland County's 39 districts, nearly 26% of registered voters voted in the general election. This is equivalent to its 2019 voter turnout rate of 25%.

The situation is similar in Holmes County, where 22% of registered voters submitted ballots in the county's 17 districts. 

The Wayne County Election Committee met on Wednesday morning to finalize the unofficial result. There are still some votes that must be counted.

These three counties are awaiting expiration of provisional ballots and absentee ballots. Only in this way can election officials prove that the result is official. 

These votes can prove to be the key in the fierce competition in every county. 

Starr said that once the official numbers appear, games with a 0.5% vote difference will be automatically recounted, and any candidate who wants to recount can request a recount. 

"We don't know which matches need to be recounted until the final official result comes out," she said. 

For communities with the same number of votes—for example, Doylestown has 5 candidates tied with a 15-member charter committee, while in Perrysville there are two candidates tied with the village council—not until every vote is counted Changes.

In Wayne County, the election committee will meet on November 15 to count additional votes. Starr said the official count will be confirmed on November 22. 

According to Deputy Director Amanda Jones, the deadline for provisional votes is also November 15th in Ashland County.

Contact Bryce via email bbuyakie@gannett.com