Elections officials pleasantly surprised with local voter turnout for second primary
NEW PHILADELPHIA (WJER) (Aug. 3, 2022) – Tuscarawas County Board of Elections officials are happy with participation in the state’s second primary that took place Tuesday even if the numbers appear low.
Director Gail Garbrandt says more than 4,000 ballots were cast, including nearly 3,200 on election day.
“There was a lot of media attention about the projected low turnout in the state of Ohio, and in Tuscarawas County turnout was 6.89 percent. So that was really good, we were very pleased with that,” she said.
Garbrandt says that’s higher than expected since non-partisan voters had no issues or races to decide. There were only ballots for registered Democrats and Republicans, and even those only had one contested race per party for seats on their state central committees.
“They are kind of the governing body of the state political parties. So, they have to go to Columbus for meetings. It is an unpaid position,” Garbrandt said.
In those two contests from Tuesday, Doug Wills had a big lead in the Republican party’s 31st District state central committeeman’s race. Jason Stevens has the most votes in the race for Democratic state central committeeman in the 31st District.
Garbrandt says there were 14 provisional ballots from Tuesday’s election that board members will determine whether to add to the vote totals when the results are certified on August 15th. There were also six absentee ballots that arrived by mail this morning and were postmarked in time to be included in the official results.