Even with Election Day on Tuesday, the Summit County Clerk’s Office is quarantined through Friday due to a positive COVID-19 exposure.
The office has already processed 18,000 ballots of the 28,000 ballots they’ve received. It won’t release any of the vote counts until after the polls close Tuesday at 8 p.m.
Summit County Clerk Kent Jones said even if the office was there to count ballots this week, they wouldn’t have counted all 28,000 by election day.
“The only thing that's going to be different is we're going to be shy, a few, maybe 2,000 ballots to report on tomorrow night than what we would have if we would have processed today and tomorrow,” Jones said.
That’s because they’ve been counting the ballots at a steady rate since they started coming in.
“We've been getting a couple of thousand each day,” he said. “So we were on track to, by tomorrow night, we would have had maybe 25,000, 24,000 at a total.”
He said the office never makes an official call on election night. But counting the ballots after election day usually doesn’t change the unofficial election results reported Tuesday night.
“So with probably two thirds of the ballots already gonna be released, unless there's something that's that really, really close,” he said. “That's just that's the way it is every election is election night is unofficial results.”
Even though some ballots won’t be processed by Tuesday night, Jones said voters shouldn’t be discouraged.
“The ballots that have already been returned have been processed and the ones that are still coming in will be processed,” he said. “They just won't be processed by tomorrow night.”
Anyone who needs assistance with a replacement ballot or same day registration can vote in-person at the Summit County Fairgrounds from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on election day. The voting center will be drive-thru only. Votes cast in-person will be processed when the clerk’s office finishes quarantine.
