NEW LEXINGTON — Perry County voters turned out at 56.29 percent in the November 3 general election, according to the Perry County Board of Elections’ statement of votes cast — 12,678 ballots cast out of 22,522 registered voters in the board’s unofficial election-night reporting.
The board’s statement of votes cast, posted on the Ohio boards of elections site, reports the countywide totals precinct by precinct. Turnout varied widely across the county’s precincts, with individual precincts in the board’s report ranging from the mid-30s in percentage terms to more than 75 percent in the strongest-turnout precinct.
Those figures are unofficial. Under Ohio’s certification calendar, county boards of elections must complete their official canvass and certify results by November 24 — the 21st day after the election — and the certified abstracts then go to the Ohio Secretary of State.
The canvass is the step that accounts for ballots not included in the election-night count, including provisional ballots ruled eligible and any timely absentee ballots, and it is the count that makes the November 3 outcomes official in Perry County’s contested races and local issues.
The board’s statement of votes cast is the county’s fullest public accounting of the election: a 110-page precinct-level report covering every contest and every counting group, generated on election night, November 3. It is the document candidates, campaigns and voters in Perry County use to see not just who won, but where the votes came from, precinct by precinct.
That precinct detail matters in a county where turnout was far from uniform. A precinct where three of four registered voters cast ballots and a precinct where barely one in three did are both part of the same countywide 56.29 percent — and the board’s report lets any resident check their own precinct’s number against the county average before the results become official.
Until certification, every result reported from Perry County — including the countywide and precinct-level numbers in the board’s statement of votes cast — carries the unofficial label, and close contests are not final until the board certifies.
What happens next: the Perry County Board of Elections completes its official canvass and certifies the county’s results by November 24, after which the Secretary of State certifies the statewide results built from the county abstracts.