Elections panel audits, OKs ballots

Seneca County Board of Elections conducted its internal audit of the Nov. 8 election Tuesday night. Board of Elections Director Jim Ehrman said three precincts were chosen at random and board members counted a local, state and federal election by hand. The three precincts were Bettsville, Pleasant Township and Attica. Ehrman said several redundancies are put into place to be sure all votes were counted, including the hand count. "It's a process," Ehrman said. "We check it and check it." He said board of elections staff, directors and then the board run an audit before the election is made official. "It's just the process," he said. "We are protecting the integrity of the system." He said 280 ballots were found after the board certified the election Nov. 22 and the board unanimously agreed to approve an amended certification of the election after those ballots were added. Ehrman said temporary workers did not run a stack of absentee ballots. He said those ballots did not change the results in any race. Full election results are available at www.electionsonthe.net/Seneca. The audit took about 2 1/2 hours. Ehrman said the audit was successful and the board approved it, meaning the election cycle is finished in Seneca County unless the Ohio Secretary of State decides to run an audit. Ehrman said a state audit is unlikely since hand counts were within 0.5 percent of official numbers. In other business, the board unanimously approved a plan for holiday comp time for directors and staff. Board Deputy Director Lori Ritzler said she and Ehrman are salaried, but have worked about 200 hours of what would normally be considered overtime since February, including about one month when directors worked every weekend. The board noted that office staff had worked more hours than normal this year, including several days when they were not expected to work. The board agreed to close the office from noon Dec. 23-Jan. 3, but the decision will depend on whether two hourly workers decide to take vacation time during that period