Board of elections to reconvene to announce final provisional ballot count
11/26/2012The suspense of waiting for a possible change in the science museum Imagination Station's tax levy will continue for a few more hours today.
The Lucas County Board of Elections met at 10 a.m. to begin the final process of certifying the vote and then recessed about 11:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m.
In all, there are 8,439 provisional ballots to be counted today, raising hopes of Imagination Station backers that there will be enough additional "yes" votes to overcome a 1,075-vote deficit in the preliminary Nov. 6 voting.
The board spent the morning session remaking about 150 flawed ballots and will resume its working session at 3:30 p.m.
Ballots must be remade when a paper ballot has been completed in a way that could not be read by the mechanical scanner. In those cases, the four-member elections board, made up of two Republicans and two Democrats, examines the ballot and will fix the ballot if it can agree on the vote the voter was trying to cast.
Imagination Station’s 0.17-mill operating levy would cost the owner of a $100,000 house $5.21 annually. The current levy, which expires at the end of 2013, generates about $1.3 million a year.
Also within range of being reversed by the outstanding provisional ballots is the contest for Lucas County Common Pleas Court judge between incumbent Democrat Myron Duhart and Republican Kenneth Phillips. Judge Duhart leads Mr. Phillips by 2,954 votes in the preliminary count.