Passion at the Polls
Nearly every registered voter in Butler County had cast a ballot on or before Tuesday.
With more than 78,000 residents casting their votes in person, in addition to the 31,000 who mailed ballots to the county, 97.5% of the 112,090 registered Butler County voters made their voice heard in the 2020 general election.
The numbers turning out to cast ballots created long waits in some precincts.
Dana Chappell, of Cranberry Township, said she waited two hours and 20 minutes to vote at Victory Church, 21150 Route 19.
“People weren't happy. One gentleman started screaming in a church. He thought people were cutting in front of him.
“He was making people anxious. I don't know what he ended up doing, but everybody stayed to vote,” Chappell said.
Tina Fedko, communications specialist with the Butler County Bureau of Elections, said delays were caused by the number of people turning out to vote in person.
Fedko said, “It's just because of the great turnouts. People want to vote in person.
“These are record numbers we are seeing compared to 2016. That's why we are seeing long lines. But every vote will be counted,” she said.
Adding to the count total, Fedko said, are the number of mail-in ballots that have been returned.
She said 38,795 ballots were mailed to county residents, and as of 4 p.m. Tuesday 31,191 had been returned.
She said many of the unreturned ballots could have been turned in at polling places by people who decided to vote in person.
While roughly half of the mail-in ballots received by the county had been counted Tuesday night, the county's faster ballot scanner had mechanical issues that prevented it from counting the remaining. Mailed ballot tabulation will resume Wednesday.
In three precincts, problems with the ballot scanners held up voting.Bill Elliott said the ballot scanner at his polling place at the Clay Township Municipal Building, 1115 Euclid School Road, quit working just under an hour after the polls opened.“I went there at 6:55 a.m., and there were 82 people in front of me,” he said. “They allowed 14 to vote at a time.”Elliott said he was waiting in line to feed his ballot into the scanner when the machine went down.Voters were told to place their completed ballots in a secrecy envelope that would be sent to be counted at the county Bureau of Elections at the courthouse.Elliott said he felt disappointed.“I wanted to vote in person and see my vote go through the scanner,” he said, but added he put his ballot in the secrecy envelope.Fedko said the bureau was aware the Clay Township scanner was down and a replacement was sent immediately.She said the bureau wants the ballots to be counted on site at the polling stations.However, she emphasized ballots placed in the secrecy envelope and sent to the courthouse “absolutely will be counted.”There was a second report of a malfunctioning scanner at the polling place at the North Main Street Church of God, 1201 N. Main St. Ext.Patty Whitesell, the judge of election at North Main Street Church of God, said a box that collects ballots after they have been scanned was installed backward.“I just turned it around. All the ballots were counted,” she said, adding that at mid-afternoon 300 of the 850 registered voters in the precinct had voted.Mail-in ballots were subject to the same scanning problems as in-person precincts. Fedko said the county's faster ballot scanning machine was intermittently not working throughout the day, and finally gave out in the late hours Tuesday.“Now, the scanner has mechanical issues. I doubt that we'll get to 80% (of mail-in ballots counted), because we're down to one smaller scanner that we're using,” she said. “It's not high-speed like the other one that's been having mechanical issues.”While roughly half of the more than 31,000 ballots the county has currently received have been tabulated thus far, Fedko estimated that the final count would not be complete until Wednesday evening, after a replacement for the higher-speed scanner was available.
In Cranberry Township, scanner issues caused a brief delay as well. At the municipal building in the township, voters there at 7 a.m. when the doors open were subject to a wait between 84 and 120 minutes depending on what polling station they attended.“We had pretty much full capacity in the building (when the polls opened),” Josh Andree, township special project coordinator, said. “People were passionate and ready to vote. It's like we were giving away a TV.”David Jendza of Butler said he liked the paper ballot in use at his polling place at First United Methodist Church, 200 E. North St.“It's kind of funny,” he said. “The paper ballots were simpler than the older computers. You just go down the list.”Michelle King, of Butler, who also voted at First United, said she voted a straight Republican ticket “because we want all the Reps we can in Congress.“I think Trump's track record says it all. He did everything he promised,” King said.For Donnielle Twentier, of Butler, who voted at North Main Street Church of God, this was her first presidential election.“I was a month too young last time,” she said.She said she planned to be up late Tuesday to watch election returns.“I'll be up anyway, so I might as well. It will kill me anyway if I don't know,” Twentier said.<i>Eagle staff writers Seb Foltz and Alex Weidenhof contributed to this report.</i>
