It's Election Day in Ohio. Local activists at the beginning of the summer, we're concerned that voter turn out would be low for this election, but The Columbus Dispatch is saying that voter turn out is actually high. According to the Ohio Secretary of State's office, voter turn out is higher than in the May primary election, almost a double election. Officials say if voters have absentee ballots, go ahead and drop those off at your Board of Elections office in Lucas County. That's in West Toledo on Sylvania Ave. You could do that. Until the the polls close this evening. There's only one issue on the ballot in Ohio. It's Issue 1, WTOL Elevens. Michael Sandlin joins us live now from the Lucas County Board of Elections in West Toledo. Michael, what exactly does Issue 1 do? Amanda, if passed, Issue one would raise the threshold to make changes to the Ohio Constitution, raising it from the current simple majority up to a 60% vote. Now that's created controversy on both sides of the issue, and that controversy has people coming in droves to the polls today. To further explain just how many people we're seeing, I'm joined right now by the Lucas County Board of Elections Director with Vera Scott Vera. So how many people we seen so far both in early voting and currently people coming to the polls so far in early voting, which ended on Sunday, we had approximately 23,000 people that had cast their absentee votes. So obviously August elections are something we didn't think we were going to be doing anymore as of last year, but we've done them in years past. How does this compare to other August elections? Well, the last August election was about 5700 and as I stated in absentee and we more than you know triple that number plus some. So it definitely was an increase in compared to the last August election. And it's actually running more in tune with the actual full primary election during the municipal year or a gubernatorial election during a municipal year. I mean excuse me gubernatorial during the primary as well. So I mean we were planning, you know, to have a busy election just due to the, you know, the information that was out there regarding both issues. We know that people are either very passionate about one or the other. So we did anticipate, you know, a higher turnout definitely from what it was in 2022. So are you still surprised compared to what you anticipated or is this about matching what what you thought we were going to see today? It's a little bit higher than we originally anticipated, but we always kind of anticipate over anyway, just in reference to making sure we have enough supplies and things of that nature. Once early voting started and into the second week we we were, we had a great clue by then because normally the second week of early voting numbers go down. In this election, early voting was consistent for the full time period. There was not one day that we had less than 500 voters except one and that was in the first week. So that was pretty indicative of the fact that people were definitely concerned about coming to cast their vote for this for this election. So clearly this is an issue that people are passionate about. It's bringing people out in bigger numbers. If people are watching this right now, they don't know where to go to vote. Oh, how can they find out for themselves? Yes, the key thing is stating the Early Vote Center is not open on Election Day. It never has been. You have to go to your current assigned polling location. If you are not sure of your polling location, they can call our office at 419-213-4001 or they can access our website at www.lucascountyohiovotes.gov or they can just type in and Google Lucas County Board of Elections and it'll take them to the site on there. It would also give them information in reference to the changes for this election, such as the current identification changes that you would need to cast your vote at your polling location today. And then it specifically lists, you know, your driver's license, Ohio ID, US Veteran Identification, Interim Ohio Identification Card or driver's license. Or if you had one of the ID's that was issued by the VMV specifically for elections, you can use that as well. But I think it was very important for us to keep that information out there because that changed in April, which was prior to the May election. Not everybody in our county were a part of the May election. So this is the first time for a lot of voters to have to actually produce a different identification to vote. So I think that's very important as well as people understanding that the deadlines of reference to absentee voting of course changed in April as well. But again a lot of voters did not were not in that primary election. So used to have 10 days to get your ballot to us. Once it was post dated on the day before the election which would have been yesterday. Now there's only four days. So that would mean that your ballot would have still had to been postmarked by yesterday, but it has to be to us by Saturday. So if people are still sitting with their ballots at home, they need to make sure that they can drop them off today. And you cannot drop it off at a polling location. We have to drop it off at our office, which is at 303737 W Sylvania. And they can put it in a ballot box or come into our office to cast their ballot. OK, So either way, make sure that you come out and cast your votes, part of our democratic process. You have until what time today to cast your vote? 7:30 PM. All right. So make sure you come out and cast your vote by 7:30. Have more updates on today's election in the 5:00 and 6:00 hours reporting in West Toledo. Michael Sanders, WTOL 11.
