Montgomery County polls close on time; election official removed from voting location

The Montgomery Board of Elections says there were no lines preventing polling places from closing at 7:30 tonight. All polling places closed on time, said Jan Kelly, BOE director.

The ballots and memory cards are making being brought back to BOE offices in Dayton where they will be counted, said Kelly.

There were no reports of voter intimidation, Kelly said.

It was reported earlier that one poll worker was removed from a polling site in Dayton

Stephen Marcum was removed from the polling place at Thurgood Marshall High School in Dayton, where he was a polling location manager.

Kelly said Marcum was asked to disconnect a cable from a voter data registration database. He refused, and the county asked deputies to remove him.

The Ohio Voter Rights Coalition, which operates a statewide toll-free hotline, said it has received sporadic reports of problems but nothing atypical for a presidential election. The coalition has received anecdotal reports of a higher demand for provisional ballots, which could be due to the 1 million infrequent voters who were purged from the registration rolls being allowed to vote provisional ballots.

Lebanon, Warren County: Lights went off for a while, voting continued using paper ballots.

Columbus, Franklin County: Protesters outside the Ohio Union polling place at OSU hurled homophobic slurs and yelled “rapist” at women entering the polling place. Security was alerted and things quieted down. It’s unclear if the pro-Trump protesters were associated with the campaign or not.

Columbus, Franklin County: At the Westgate Recreational Center, Trump supporters yelled at people who appeared to be Clinton supporters. Some Clinton supporters yelled things like facist and racist. The exchanges escalated but dissipated.

Columbus, Franklin County: Broad Street Presbyterian Church polling location. A man taking photos early in the morning and being unpleasant to polling workers was asked to leave by the workers.

Doylestown, Wayne County: A semi-truck festooned with Trump signs blocked access to a polling place. The coalition has yet to confirm this and is investigating the report.

Columbus, Franklin County: At St. Stephen the Maryter on the west side, the polling place ran out of provisional ballots. Contact information was collected from voters who were told they’d be notified later in the day when the replacement ballots were available. Not clear if the notification was carried out but no report to the contrary.

In Warren County, ballots cast this morning at the Mary L. Cook Library in Waynesville remained uncounted this evening.

The ballots were among those stored in the emergency bin in a vote-counting machine at the polling place to scan the ballots.

The machine was damaged in transit and ballots cast during the first two hours were stored in the bin until a new machine could be delivered to the poll, according to Board of Elections Director Brian Sleeth.

The poll has been so busy, poll workers have been unable to feed in the uncounted ballots, Sleeth said about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.

“They’ve been so busy,” Sleeth said. “They were going to cause their own bottleneck.”

Voters were concerned about their ballots being used for voter fraud.

“I’ve been voting there for 13 years. Never had that happen before,” said Melinda Daino, a Wayne Twp. resident.

“There were a few of us that were kind of concerned.”

The ballots are fed into the machine, while two poll workers, one Republican, the other Democrat, watch. These poll workers have the only two keys to the emergency bin, Sleeth added.

The ballots will be counted by 7:45 p.m., Sleeth predicted.

“The ballots are safe and secure and the ballots workers cannot leave the location until every ballot has been scanned,” he said.

A Montgomery County elections official was removed from a polling location by sheriff’s deputies for failure to follow a directive of county officials.

Stephen Marcum was removed from the polling place at Thurgood Marshall High School in Dayton, where he was a polling location manager.

Montgomery County Board of Elections Director Jan Kelly said Marcum was asked to disconnect a cable from a voter data registration database. He refused, and the county asked deputies to remove him.

Kelly said Marcum was not under arrest, but will never work again as an elections volunteer in Ohio.

“He’s been a rabble-rouser during training classes here,” Kelly said. “I’m not surprised he wouldn’t miss a media opportunity.”

Still, Kelly said elections officials were surprised by the man’s behavior Tuesday night.

“He’s always been really friendly before and good, a little quirky,” Kelly said. “He hasn’t exhibited this bizarre behavior before.”

Kelly said the removal will “absolutely not” impact the integrity of the results.

Voters hitting the polls today should remember to bring required identification, and know their rights, according to Ellis Jacobs with the Miami Valley Voter Protection Coalition.

Jacobs, and this newsroom, have heard reports of people being turned away for not having proper ID.

If a voter doesn’t have proper ID – or if they are turned away from voting at the proper location for any reason – they have the right to provide the last four digits of their social security number and vote with a provisional ballot which will be counted if the voter is registered and in the right place," Jacobs said.

“Once they check them out at the board of elections, their vote will be counted,” Jacobs said.

Jacobs’ group handles local calls to the national Election Protection hotline: 1-866-OUR-VOTE.

Election Protection just released an update saying they have received reports of voter intimidation and suppression in African American communities in Ohio.

“This includes intimidating signage, road closures and individuals being forced to vote provisionally,” the report says.

In Franklin County, voters at a polling place in a Somali community were reportedly told they had to vote by provisional ballot then told the polling place didn’t have any provisional ballots, so they couldn’t vote.

Election Protection reports that, nationally, calls to the hotline have come disproportionately from African American and Latino communities, with each accounting for 20 percent of the call volume.

“(A)nd we are seeing a disturbing number from college campuses where misinformation or other efforts to thwart voting are occurring. Incidents include voter intimidation, broken machines, and misapplication of voter ID laws,” the report says.

Now that most people are leaving work and could be heading to the polls, our newsroom is monitoring line lengths and wait times at various polling locations.

So far this afternoon, it is good news.

We’ve checked several polling places in Dayton, Kettering, Beavercreek and Huber Heights and lines appear short and the voting process quick.

We will continue to monitor polling locations around the Miami Valley to keep you informed of lines and waiting times.

Polls close in Ohio at 7:30 p.m.

With rain in the forecast across much of the area, board of elections officials say they are sending ponchos to many polling places to keep workers and equipment dry as they deliver voting machine memory cards and optical scan and provisional ballots to the county seat tonight.

Voters should consider bringing umbrellas as well as lines could be long in the evening. Elections officials say anyone in line when the polls close at 7:30 p.m. will be given a chance to vote.

In Montgomery County alone, there are 372,680 voters who could hit the polls today at 177 polling locations staffed by roughly 2,000 elections workers.

Jan Kelly, Montgomery County Board of Elections Director, said at a press conference this afternoon that things are going smoothly for a presidential election; all polling places opened on time.

“We’ve had a few issues at some of the precincts -- maybe some paper running out because of a lot of voters there, perhaps a machine that we had to shut down. But the beauty of that is that we have so many machines at the polling locations that it didn’t cause any problems,’’ Kelly said.

Kelly did warn people to look out for calls and emails from people claiming to be from the board of elections and trying to trick voters into voting twice. She said voters have called to say they’ve received calls saying there was a problem with their ballot and they need to vote again.

“I don’t know where these phone calls came from, not from us. We wouldn’t call anyone and say that.’’ Kelly said.

A power outage in Lebanon has put the lights out, but voting is continuing.

Brian Sleeth, Warren County elections director, said the power went out about 12:30 p.m. at the central elections office and at other polling places in Lebanon.

However, Sleeth said that while the computers are down, residents can still cast their ballots, despite the power outage.

Several voters at CF Holliday School this morning were only issued one page of the two page Kettering ballot.

One voter contacted our newsroom to say several of the charter amendment issues appeared to have been left off her paper ballot.

When we contacted the Board of Elections the polling place recognized the error.

The board is contacting affected individuals to allow them to complete the second page, Montgomery County Board of Elections Deputy Director Steve Harsman said.

Kettering has one of the longest ballots in the region today.

Reports continue to come in from voters throughout the area about waits of more than an hour to vote at many locations.

We've received reports that a significantly long line, with a wait possibly of multiple hours, has formed at Community Golf Course. When our crew arrived on the scene, the line was at a manageable level.

A spokeswoman for the Dayton Metro Library system said all branches of the library, including Wilmington-Stoop, submitted on time to the board of elections, all of the voter registration applications they received (referenced in update of 10:28 a.m. below).

An earlier tip indicated some who registered to vote at Wilmington-Stoop Branch of Dayton Metro Library were being told at polling places they were not registered.

Director of External Relations for the library, Diane Farrell, said it's possible mistakes on an application could have held up its approval at the board of elections and voters would need to vote provisionally and then take up any issues with the board of elections.

WHIO-TV's Mike Campbell reports in Vandalia that voters have been lined up since polls opened today. Campbell also talked with Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, who was in Montgomery County this morning.

Husted said voters can be confident voting in Ohio is a fair process.

Husted also enjoyed a quick food stop on his trip to Montgomery County

Steve Harsman, Deputy Director of the Montgomery County Board of Elections, said during a news conference that there have been few problems with Montgomery County voting this morning.

Harsman said the board received two reports of machines registering the incorrect pick for president (noted in 9:40 a.m. update below), but that staffers had checked the machines and they are working properly.

One manager did not arrive at a polling place in Oakwood, Smith Elementary School, and so that location started without the usual level of materials and staff. But other precincts were voting at that location, so staff was able to cover the materials and open on time, Harsman said.

We received a report from a voter who said that some who registered to vote at the Wilmington-Stoop Branch of Dayton Metro Library were being told at polling places they were not registered. Harsman said his office was unable to resolve the registration issue today, and he advised voters in that scenario to vote provisionally.

Steve Harsman, Deputy Director of the Montgomery County Board of Elections, is updating reporters on Election Day.

We have received two reports, one from Montgomery County and one from Darke County, that voting machines didn't show the voters' correct choices for president when finalizing their ballots.

Darke County Board of Elections Administrator Luke Burton said that issue had not been reported to the board from any polling places this morning.

We're continuing to work to confirm these reports.

Things are running smoothly at the busy Thurgood Marshall High School polling place on Hoover Avenue.

Clara Johnson was excited to cast her vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton, the first major party female candidate for President.

"This day is very exciting to me," she said. "I will be watching it tonight."

She's confident Clinton will win the election.

"And if she does, I'm gonna do a backflip," Johnson said.

Other voters didn't want to share who they chose for president but said it was important to them to get out and vote for all the races and local issues.

"The presidential vote is a hot mess," said Camisha Maze. But she wanted to vote in favor of Dayton's income tax increase, Issue 9.

Larry Klaben, who voted at Wilkinson Plaza downtown this morning said it's every citizen's responsibility to vote.

"Every vote counts and it's important that we take that right and that we make it valuable," he said.

After casting his ballot, Klaben returned to help a blind man make his way into the polling place.

Mark Weinstein, executive director of public relations at Cedarville University, sent in this report: He arrived at Victory Temple in Fairborn to vote at 7:35 a.m., and the line didn't move much through the first 20 minutes. At 7:54 a.m., there was an estimated 1.5-hour wait to vote.

We're receiving multiple reports of issues at polling locations in Greene County and have confirmed some information. Read more about the Greene County reports here.

The Greene County Board of Elections indicates that reboots resolved technology issues at St. Augustine Catholic Church in Jamestown that required use of paper ballots for a time.

Congressman Mike Turner, R-Dayton, is speaking to the media in Dayton before casting his vote. Turner faces Democrat Robert Klepinger, D-Harrison Twp., and Huber Heights Mayor Thomas McMasters, an independent candidate in the race to represent the 10th Congressional District. The district spans all or parts of Montgomery, Greene and Fayette counties.

He declined to comment on the Presidential race but said there are so many important races and issues on the ballot from the presidential race on down to local schools that people should care about.

"This is an incredibly important time and we hope everyone plans their day accordingly so they have time to make it to the polls," he said. "There are a lot of races that I've been involved in that have been very close and they are decided by those people who get up and decide to go to the polls."

We have confirmed that St. Augustine Catholic Church in Jamestown is using paper ballots only because only two iPads were functioning. We're continuing to work to gather more information.

We're receiving multiple reports from Greene County polling locations. They include: One using paper ballots only because of voting machine issues, long lines at another location because of technical issues, and card readers not operational at others.

We're working to gather more information.

Polls have opened throughout Ohio, and voters have already lined up at some polls to vote.

Gina Hendrix of Xenia was first in line at Xenia Grace Chapel this morning.

"I'm here to vote, it's very important to be here, and I'm going to be here," Hendrix said.

While some large polling places reported long lines when doors opened at 6:30 a.m., the first voters at smaller locations were surprised find no wait.

There were five people in line at the Asbury Apartments in McPherson Town where only one Dayton precinct votes.

Two of those early voters said they'd been expecting a wait of 20 minutes or more.

A line quickly developed, however, because only one voting machine was operational initially.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, appearing on Miami Valley's Morning News on AM 1290 and News 95.7 WHIO Tuesday morning, said Ohio makes efforts to preserve the integrity of the state's voting system.

"Ohio's system of elections is as strong and vibrant as it's ever been," Husted said. "You can count on the integrity of it. We have safeguards in place. Remember when you go the polls today to bring your identification so that we can ensure an easy process for you to vote, because that's part of the integrity of our elections, making sure that only truly registered people are voting in Ohio, and that is part of what we do to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat in Ohio."

What if, Husted was asked, voters see any issues?

"The first thing, we have poll workers, poll managers there, they are trained and ready to address concerns, so that's the first place to turn," Husted said. "If you have questions beyond that, you certainly should call your board of elections or the secretary of state's office and we'll be happy to try to clear those issues up."