TOLEDO — Lucas County was still the state’s biggest election-night question mark late Tuesday: hours after polls closed across Ohio, the Associated Press tabulation showed none of the county’s 280 precincts reporting results, leaving a nationally watched congressional race and Ohio’s U.S. Senate contest waiting on Toledo.
The delay followed a disrupted Election Day in the county. Two bomb threats temporarily closed the polling location at Beverly Elementary School in Toledo on Tuesday morning. Toledo Public Schools spokeswoman Patty Mazur told the Akron Beacon Journal the location was closed for one hour and 15 minutes; Lucas County Board of Elections Deputy Director Tim Monaco gave the same figure, correcting an earlier estimate of roughly two hours, according to the Beacon Journal.
Because of the closure, voting at Beverly Elementary was extended until 9:15 p.m. — for provisional ballots only, Dan Lusheck, a spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, told USA Today. The Lucas County Board of Elections said in a Facebook post that voting continued as normal elsewhere in the county and that it remained committed to secure, fair and efficient elections despite the challenges, according to the Columbus Dispatch.
The missing Lucas County numbers matter well beyond Toledo. In Ohio’s 9th Congressional District, Republican Derek Merrin led Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur — the longest-serving woman in congressional history, seeking a 23rd term — on the strength of the district’s outlying Republican-leaning counties, the Beacon Journal reported. Merrin had 73,129 votes to Kaptur’s 49,529 in the count outside Lucas County, and Kaptur’s path runs directly through heavily Democratic Toledo.
Statewide, the U.S. Senate race between Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Sen. Jon Husted was too early to call late Tuesday, with the Columbus Dispatch reporting as of 10:30 p.m. that votes were still being counted in Lucas and Cuyahoga counties, two Democratic strongholds.
Turnout in Northwest Ohio’s reliably Republican counties was running below 2024 levels — in some cases by nearly 15 percent — according to figures from the Ohio Secretary of State’s website and area boards of elections cited by the Beacon Journal.
What happens next: Lucas County’s unofficial results, once released by the county board of elections, will complete the picture in the 9th District and the Senate race. All Election Night results are unofficial; the county board must certify its count within 21 days.
Photo: Chris Rycroft, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons