Ohio special election: How Franklin County lost - and found - 588 votes in tight race

Jessie Balmert | Cincinnati Enquirer

Show Caption Hide Caption Trump Campaigns for Balderson in Ohio's 12th President Trump campaigned for Troy Balderson in Delaware County on Saturday.

COLUMBUS - There wasn't some mass conspiracy that led Franklin County to misplace 588 votes for several hours in a tight congressional race.

It was just human error, insists Franklin County Board of Elections spokesman Aaron Sellers.

When election officials brought two master personal electronic ballots – called PEBs – back to the Franklin County Board of Elections from a Worthington polling location, one was uploaded into the final, unofficial total of a super-tight congressional race.

The other was not.

The next day as bipartisan members of the board of elections were reviewing the race, they realized the PEB's results were missing. The PEB is a relatively small device that looks almost like a Nintendo cartridge. It's inserted into voting machines.

That PEB and its 588 votes were found. The breakdown was 198 votes for Republican Troy Balderson, 388 votes for Democrat Danny O'Connor and two for Green Party candidate Joe Manchik.

That meant a net gain of 190 votes for O'Connor. Balderson's already slim margin of victory shrunk to 1,564 votes.

The PEB that was not uploaded on the night of the election was always in a secure location, Sellers told The Enquirer.

Election officials took both PEBs from the polling location, which was a senior citizens center, to the locked board of elections headquarters Tuesday night, he said. Flash drives from each machine were also returned per protocol.

No one took the device home or forgot it at the polling location.

The mistake is embarrassing for Franklin County election officials, but they caught it quickly. Those 588 votes will be included – along with additional absentee and provisional ballots across the district – in the final tally, which must be tabulated by Aug. 24.

"We have a procedure in place and it got missed," Sellers said. "We’re human."