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Election Day: Voters have a lot to decide

LISBON — Election Day 2018 has finally arrived, and not a moment too soon.

After enduring weeks of seemingly endless political TV and radio advertisements, robocalls and new flyers arriving daily in mailboxes everywhere, voters will finally have their say starting at 6:30 a.m., when the polling places open. The polling places — there are 87 in Columbiana County — close 13 hours later at 7:30 p.m.

Voters will have a lot of decisions to make starting with choosing a new governor, state attorney general, state auditor, state treasurer, state attorney general, secretary of state, state supreme court, state appeals court, a new U.S. senator and congressman, state senator and state representative. Locally, there is a county commissioner to elect.

There is also the contentious state Issue 1 and a lengthy list of local ballot issues, including one countywide levy.

The county elections board met on Monday, as is its custom, to take care of last-minute business in advance of the election. They will reconvene at 7 p.m. today to address any issues that may arise during the voting.

Elections board director Adams Booth reported the number of early ballots cast reached 7,541 as of 3 p.m. Sunday — which is about 2,000 ballots more than either of the previous gubernatorial election years of 2014 and 2010. He does not know whether this is due to increased interest in this election or the growing popularity of early voting since it was instituted in the early 2000s.

Of the 7,541 early ballots, 3,244 were cast by people who identified themselves as independents, 2,785 by Republican and 1,507 by Democrats. Five people identified as members of the Green Party also voted early.

About 75 percent of the early/absentee ballots have been cast by mail, while another 20 percent opted to vote in person at the elections board.

Booth reported 66,688 people have registered to vote and he expects turnout to be in the 50 percent to 55 percent range, which would be slightly higher than normal range of of 45 percent to 50 percent in gubernatorial general elections.

After the board disposed of routine business involving some of the early/absentee ballots, county Democratic Party activist Richard Presutti asked to address them about the decision they made earlier in the year about the candidacy of Heaven Guest, the Democrat who was seeking to run for county common pleas court judge as an independent.

On May 29, the board voted 2-2 along party lines to reject Guest’s independent candidacy petitions, sending the dispute to Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, who broke the tie by ruling the evidence indicated she remained closely affiliated with the Democratic Party. Guest appealed the decision to the Ohio Supreme Court, which sided with Husted by a 5-0 vote.

Presutti said there are few independent candidates, and perhaps none, who did not start out as a registered Democrat or Republican, and until now the board has taken candidates at their word when they claimed to be independent, regardless of their past political affiliations. He is concerned that in the future the decisions will be made by whatever party “controls the machinery” locally and at the state level.

Presutti asked if that was going to the policy going forward, and Booth said each dispute of this sort is handled on a case-by-case basis, depending on the circumstances. For further clarification, he suggested Presutti read the state supreme court’s analysis used to reach its conclusion.

When Presutti continued to press the issue, board member David Johnson said it is a dead issue and this was not the time — the day before the election –to have this debate.

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