Nov. 3 election results were certified by the Wood County Board of Elections, showing a 73.05% turnout
and no election fraud, according to officials.
At Wednesday’s meeting, officials addressed and denied social media misinformation and assertions
concerning election security.
The board met to certified official general election results, which included several late arriving
numbers. Turnout was 73.05% with 68,103 votes cast by 93,228 registered voters.
In the presidential election Republican candidate Donald Trump won Wood County with 35,757 votes (53%),
beating Democrat Joe Biden’s total of 30,617 (45%).
A statement was issued by Dominion Voting in which the voting system company denied “rumors” associated
with “false assertions about vote switching and software issues with our voting systems.”
“There’s a lot of misinformation out there,” said Terry Burton, co-director of the board of elections.
“Our system is run locally. … Nobody’s in the backroom flipping switches.”
Carol DeJong, co-director of the board of elections, also commented on the security of the individual
votes and identification issues that have been alleged related to voting methodology.
“Once it’s been accepted, there’s no way to correlate [a vote] back to a voter. That’s why we have the
paper ballot confirmation,” DeJong said.
Burton spoke about various rumors addressed in the Dominion Voting statement.
“I think this will take on a life of its own on the internet. I can’t take responsibility for what
happens in other places. I honestly don’t think election officials in other places are doing things
wrong, but here we take our voting results very seriously and we check it and double check it,” Burton
said.
In other count numbers, there were an additional 170 mail-in votes, that arrived after Election Day and
met all qualifications to be counted. With the official certification no more votes can be added.
The provisional vote from the Monday meeting was also amended, changing the number cast from 1,611 to
1,635, for 24 additional votes.
“This was purely human error and it was just not good math,” Burton said.
The error was caught on a double check of the numbers for the final vote certification.
A potential runoff election will not be taking place for Wood County Commons Pleas Court judge.
Joel Kuhlman won with 28,300 (50.27%) against Corey Speweik’s 27,999 votes (49.73%). The margin was
outside the threshold of 281 to trigger an automatic recount.
A recount was triggered with the single vote margin in the Milton Township additional 1.5 mill levy. It
will take place on Monday. There were 271 (50.09%) votes in favor of the levy and 270 (49.91%) votes
against, with 553 votes cast from 705 registered voters.
The Jerry City 3-mill renewal levy is now a single vote outside the margin to require a recount. There
were 84 (48.55%) votes in favor of the levy and 89 (51.45%) votes against, with 175 votes cast from 255
registered voters.
The board also noted that inquiries for the next election have already been made.
“There’s always another election,” said board member Mike Zickar. “We don’t forget.”
