ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Voter turnout during Tuesday’s primary election reached just over 20% in Eastern Ohio, and some races remain to be decided after redistricting.

The votes cast in Belmont County will be canvassed May 24. Board of Elections Director Aaron Moore said no race seems close enough that incoming provisional votes would change the results.

A total of 2,956 absentee ballots came in early.

“This includes all of it, nursing homes, mail, over the counter, in person,” Deputy Director Kamron Chervenak said. “Absentee voting begins roughly 30 days before the election. It takes place in our office, but it stops the day before the election.”

Chervenak added that participation was about normal.

“It’s comparable to what would be an even-year election for a non-presidential year, meaning you would compare this year to 2018. That was the last time the governor was up,” she said. “That’s what we compare these numbers to.”

Heavy rain buffeted the area through the day but did not impact the election process.

“We’ve had no issue as far as the weather has gone,” she said. “We’ve had no power outages, and we’ve been well here in Belmont County. We did administer a plan just in case there were to be an outage. We contacted all the polling locations and informed them that there is a battery backup on your machine and what to do.”

At the end of the evening, Election Board member Michael Shaheen said only 21.30 percent of registered Belmont County voters cast a ballot, or 9,513 out of 44,658 voters.

There was one last-minute change, when Shawna Roberts, Democrat candidate for the 6th District of the U.S. House of Representatives, withdrew, meaning votes for her were not counted.

“It doesn’t matter what she gets, the votes don’t count,” Shaheen said.

Chervenak said there were sufficient poll workers to carry out the election. At a minimum, 280 poll workers are needed, 140 from either party.

“We had enough scheduled,” she said. “With any job, there’s going to be naturally call-offs, but we had alternates who were able to step up and fill in that morning. … Obviously we’d like to have more than we need in case there’s a call-off and we need to fill someone in last-minute.”

Voters might have seen some of their local elected officials working at the polls.

“They’re allowed to be, as long as their names aren’t on the ballot,” Chervenak said. “We did have a few step up this election and do so, and I assume will continue to do so. … You’re not allowed to be a poll worker, naturally, if you’re on the ballot.”

For example, county Coroner Amanda Fisher helped to staff the polling location at Bethesda Christian Church.

In a departure from the norm, the primaries this year are not yet complete. The Ohio Supreme Court has rejected four maps drawn by the Ohio Redistricting Commission thus far, but a federal court ruled it will impose one of those maps if the matter is not resolved. The delays mean another election to decide the State Central Committee races for both parties and candidates for the General Assembly’s 95th and 96th House Districts will also be up for election in August.

“But our district is subject to change, with the redistricting,” Chervenak said.

“As far as the next election, we’re anticipating something happening, but again no official dates and times. Nothing yet,” Moore said.

“Obviously something needs to happen, because these people’s terms are ending,” Chervenak said. “We’re just waiting on word from the secretary of state. Upon receiving further directions, we’ll be able to navigate from there.”

“They’re still working on the redistricting map,” Moore said.

Chervenak said the past election’s poll workers were informed that they might be needed for the continuation of the primary.

“Until we receive the actual directive, the actual guidelines, we’re not going to go ahead and schedule people,” Chervenak said. “Until we receive that directive from the secretary of state on how to deliver this second primary for 2022, we are kind of at a halt. We are very grateful to our poll workers. … We would like to see them return, but it’s hard to tell them a day when you don’t know the day.”

Moore and Chervenak declined to speculate if the second primary will be comparable to Tuesday’s in terms of turnout.

“With every election we have to reschedule them. We’ll be looking for more poll workers this fall,” Chervenak said. She added election officials are confident the next election will also proceed smoothly. “Things are good in Belmont County, as they’ve been for years and as they will continue to be.”

Harrison County Board of Elections Director Dion Troiano said officials there were happy with the voter turnout Tuesday during the primary election.

“We were at about 9.5% (Tuesday) around noon, so the fact that we had 26% total was fantastic. We had more turnout than we did in the general election last year,” he said.

Although there were a “few hiccups,” Troiano said they had no major issues.

“We had some poll-pack printers not wanting to cooperate early in the day, but we fixed the issue and there were no major hiccups on Election Night,” he said.

Later in the evening, he said they did have a few precincts lose power but the issue was quickly corrected once the generators were up and running.

“Luckily the township trustees and fire departments were able to get the generators in time to make everything go smoothly,” he added.

In Monroe County, board of elections Director Mollie Landefeld said they had one of the lowest voter turnouts that she can recall over her 12-year tenure with the board. She said the county had a 21.87% voter turnout during the primary election.

“We had our normal times where we had more voters than not, but a lot of the day was very slow,” she said.

Landefeld said the county did not experience any issues during the day and was able to get out the election results quickly.

Staff Writer Carri Graham contributed to this report.