Franklin County's 62 percent voter turnout was lower than expected, but not in some precincts where an impossible 119 percent of those registered cast ballots.

That miscount, being corrected today, is one of a few nettles that tangled voting and tallying. Otherwise, "it was a very smooth election," said Michael Stinziano, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections.

The board is continuing routine cleanup after a 35-day marathon that began with early voting and ended Election Day.

Unofficial returns show that 524,207 of the county's 846,343 registered voters cast ballots. But electronic votes were accidentally counted twice in three precincts as tallying discs were quickly fed into a centralized counter.

The affected areas are in the 15th Congressional District; there, Republican Steve Stivers leads Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy by almost 400 votes.

Errors were in Worthington's 3-D, which has 534 registered voters and posted 633 votes. In Worthington 3-B, which has 951 registered voters, 1,095 votes were counted. And Columbus 19-F, in Clintonville, which has 1,066 registered voters, posted 1,138 votes.

Numbers are being corrected. The official count uses cards from each voting machine to avoid double-counting.

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner questioned why Franklin County took so long to count paper ballots. Stinziano said his employees were overwhelmed by early absentee voting. Lines stretched into the night at Veterans Memorial. Voters trying to avoid that wait formed lines at the board's offices Monday for take-home absentee ballots.

As a result, early counts weren't finished before polls opened Tuesday.

Stinziano plans to suggest that Brunner shut off early absentee voting on the Saturday before the next election to avoid this problem.

The board now will turn its attention to qualifying voters whose ballots otherwise wouldn't be counted. Some made simple mistakes on absentee-information envelopes. Another 27,306 had to vote provisionally, though some should not have had to.

A database glitch flagged 1,137 voters in poll books along with 19,255 whose address-verification cards were returned in the mail as undeliverable. Those voters got provisional ballots, which are counted after Ohio's 10-day verification period.

Phone calls early in the day Tuesday alerted the board that something had gone amiss, and poll workers were told about 9:30 a.m. to disregard that flag.

Early fears were that 35,000 voters might be affected. In all, 467 people voted provisionally before the call went out. It's unclear how many of those had been improperly flagged.

Starting today, another 5,000 absentee voters will find notices in their mail today to correct identification deficiencies on their absentee envelopes. Some forgot to sign; others used the wrong number from their driver's license.

Brunner told counties to give voters until Nov. 14 to fill in gaps and have their votes counted. Voters must go to the board's offices with identification and fill out a form.

bcarmen@dispatch.com

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