MOUNT VERNON — The Knox County Board of Elections scored 100 percent on its recounts and audits from the Nov. 4 general election.
State law requires county boards count by hand at least 5 percent of the votes in each race subject to a recount.
In Knox County, the Monroe Township trustee, Loudonville-Perrysville school board, and the Knox County Educational Service Center school board races triggered automatic recounts.
Automatic recounts occur when the voting margin is within one-half of one percent in a local election.
“The tabulation that we had from our machines and our software matched the hand count,” Deputy BOE Director Jack Goodman said.
“As always, the hand count took a little bit of extra work, a few extra checks to make sure that we were hand counting correctly, but in the end, everything matched the tabulation.”
BOE Director James Blazer said local recounts are somewhat rare.
“In this one, we had several that were within one or two votes, and there isn’t a large volume, so one or two votes actually can change everything,” he said.
“It can sway it or put it into the percentages where by law it requires the recount.”
After the recount, the three Monroe Township trustees elected were Wayne Zollars, Doug Smith, and James Chris Lepley.
The BOE did not conduct a recount in the Knox County ESC race.
Goodman said that when elections staff removed the invalid write-in votes, the totals fell just above the threshold for an automatic recount.
Additionally, Rebecca Nourse, who finished last in the four-way board race, declined to ask for a recount.
“Rebecca Nourse has the right to say she doesn’t want the recount, and that’s what she exercised before the recount occurred,” Blazer explained.
The Ashland County BOE certified the recount results for the Loudonville-Perrysville school board race on Dec. 3.
Auditing the vote
The Ohio Revised Code also requires election boards to audit countywide issues and two local races of their choice.
For the Nov. 4 election, the sole countywide issue was the Mental Health & Recovery Board levy. For the local races, the board chose Mount Vernon’s 3rd Ward council race and the Liberty Township trustee race to audit.
Elections staff completed the audit in about 90 minutes on Dec. 12 and found no discrepancies.
The state requires election audits to be 99.9 percent accurate.
“The last election we were at 100 percent. This election we came in at 100 percent,” Blazer said.
The director said the staff “has the systems down,” whether it involves directives from the Ohio Revised Code or the Ohio Secretary of State.
“And then there’s some institutional memory here, doing it and knowing these are the variables that could cause something to happen,” Blazer said.
“I’m very, very confident in our crew, the volunteers we have out there in the field, and also the crew that we have here. We have a group of part-timers that we call upon as well during the election, because it’s about 120 days to do it all.”
