The Lucas County Board of Elections posted final, unofficial results from Tuesday’s vote at 2:34 a.m., apparently making the county, once again, the last in Ohio to do so.

The Ohio Secretary of State’s office declared results in from all 88 counties minutes after Lucas County reported its results -- about seven hours after the polls had closed at 7:30 p.m.

The county was also last in the state in the May 6 primary.

Elections Director Gina Kaczala said the main reason for the late report was the more than 200 paper ballots that had to be remade because of errors by voters in filling out the ballots.

“It was all the remakes. We have no control why someone can’t follow the instructions and fill in the ovals,” Ms. Kaczala said.

By law, paper ballots are remade when the ballot is rejected by the scanner, either because the voter erroneously put an X or a check in the oval rather than filling it in, if a voter fills in a circle too heavily and it bleeds through the other side, or if a voter makes ambiguous marks that leave the intent in doubt.

When that happens, the four-member board looks at each ballot, takes a vote to determine the voter’s intent, and then assigns the staff, using a bipartisan team, to make a new, identical ballot. It’s a time-consuming process that some boards leave to the staff, Deputy Director LaVera Scott said.

The four elections board members and about a dozen staffers, as well as three election observers, and four Lucas County sheriff’s deputies closed up shop in the Early Vote Center about 3 a.m.

In the May 6 primary, board members and staffers had remained in the building until about 9:30 a.m. because of many problems that cropped up in that election. 

This week, another problem was that Waterville had a resolution on the ballot that failed to differentiate between the incorporated and unincorporated parts of the municipality, Ms. Kaczala said.

The legal inquiries caused a delay, requiring a separate database for the Waterville election. The results of the Waterville election were manually entered into the main database as the final event before the 100 percent figure could be reported, she said.

A third problem was that the pollworkers at two locations, the Sylvania Senior Center and the Margaret Hunt Senior Center in South Toledo, accidentally left a card in the machines at the locations. The board sent teams to both locations to retrieve the cards about 11 p.m.

Results from the four precincts affected by the pollworker mistake and the 10 precincts of Waterville were not on the public Web site until the ballot re-makes were completed, and the last results were posted at once, at 2:34 a.m.

John Irish, a Democratic member, and the only one with more than four months experience on the four-member board, said, “every election has its snags and we had a couple of snags.”

He said the new board works more harmoniously than the previous board, and the staff morale is higher.

“I feel this board is moving in the right direction,” he said.

The May 6 primary also involved machine cards that weren’t returned, a search for missing data cards that turned out to have no votes, and a separate database that had to be manually entered. Also complicating that election was a high level of tension between then-board member Jon Stainbrook and Ms. Kaczala over the missing data cards. His vocal criticism of Ms. Kaczala led to Mr. Irish confronting Mr. Stainbrook until they were separated by a sheriff’s deputy.

Following the May 6 debacle, Secretary of State Jon Husted conducted a four-day public investigation into problems at the board and ended by removing Mr. Stainbrook, fellow Republican Tony DeGidio, and Ron Rothenbuhler, who was the county Democratic chairman. Three new board members, Republicans Peter Handwork and Mark Wagoner, Sr., and Democrat Brenda Hill, were appointed and took their seats in July.

Early in the night Tuesday, it looked possible that the board could avoid the dubious distinction of being the last in the state to report, as 91.2 percent of the vote was showing by 10:34 p.m., an early total by Lucas County standards.

Ms. Kaczala’s goal was 12:30 a.m.

The board president, Ms. Hill, predicted a 1 a.m. completion.

Despite the late hour when final results were posted, the delay did not leave many outcomes in doubt.

Ms. Kaczala attributed many of the flawed ballots to overly sensitive scanners. She blamed the scanners’ sensitivity on being moved in each election.

The elections board operates out of four buildings: its main offices, its warehouse, its early vote center -- which has been in a different building almost every election in recent years, and its storage facility in the former Child Study Institute.

“They are so beat up. They’re not meant to be moved continuously,” Ms. Kaczala said.

The Lucas County commissioners have been asked repeatedly by the elections board to find a single, permanent building for the elections operation, including its early voting center.

Contact Tom Troy at: tomtroy@theblade.com or 419-724-6058 and on Twitter @TomFTroy.

First Published November 5, 2014, 9:39 a.m.