“I am just happy we’re off oversight, and my staff is ecstatic about it,” Board of Elections Director Tracy Smith said. ”I just see a lot a lot of focus here, like right now getting ready for the November general ... it’s been a very good experience."
The Ohio Secretary of State’s office placed the Greene County Board of Elections under administrative oversight after problems with each election spanning the last few years.
In 2023, election results for the Yellow Springs Village Council and an uncontested Cedar Cliff School Board race were delayed due to a series of errors. In 2022, some absentee voters received a ballot for a party other than the party they requested, and in 2021 and 2022, some elections materials were printed with wrong dates.
Smith was hired by the Board of Elections in March.
In order to get off administrative oversight, the board had to update its election administration plan and improve timelines, among other things, Smith said. The board’s successful administration of the May election was another key proving ground, he added.
“When I first got here, there really was no real direction as far as what we needed to complete ... to get off of oversight,” he said. “But at a certain point ... we just went to Secretary of State and asked, ‘What is it you need from us?’ And it was at that point that Secretary of State came through for us, and gave us certain things we needed to get taken care of.”
The Greene County Board of Elections has also started the process of redrawing precincts for the county, though that will not be done and implemented before the November election, Smith said.
“We don’t want to be changing precincts, adding precincts, things like that, prior to a November election,” Smith said. “But right after the November election, we’re going to go in and really get our precincts. I would like to see them all right around probably 1,000 voters.”
“Re-precincting” is a process that should be done every 10 years, Smith said, but hasn’t been done in Greene County since about 2011. A precinct cannot contain more than 1,400 voters, by Ohio law.
Additionally, this November, some voters in Sugarcreek Twp. will have a new polling location. Voters who previously cast their ballots at Christ Church in Sugarcreek Twp., located at 3370 Upper Bellbrook Road, will now cast their ballots at the Sugarcreek Twp. building on 2090 Ferry Road.
Voters in that precinct have also used the Bellbrook-Sugarcreek School Board facilities, though all traffic will now be directed to the Sugarcreek Twp. building, Smith said.
“The Board of Education couldn’t have us in there anymore, so we ended up going to Christ Church,” Smith said. “But in doing that, we increased the number of voters that were going into a location that, after the election we looked at and said, ‘If we had a bigger election, like a presidential or a gubernatorial, that’s probably not good.’”
The Dayton Daily News has reached out to the Ohio Secretary of State’s office for comment.
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