Ohio Uncounted Votes Found, Tightening Already Narrow Race

The addition of 588 newly discovered, previously uncounted votes by Ohio election officials has made the margin in state's Congressional District 12 even tighter: 1,564 in favor of Republican Troy Balderson, with 8,483 more ballots to count, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

Democrat Danny O'Connor gained 190 votes when the missing ballots were counted.

"The votes from a portion of one voting location had not been processed into the tabulation system," according to a Franklin County Board of Election statement on Wednesday. "The Griswold Center voting location had two master (personal electronic ballots), only one of which was read and processed into the tabulation system on election night."

Despite the fact that 5,048 absentee ballots still have be counted along with 3,435 provisional ballots, Balderson has declared victory in the race, along with President Donald Trump, who publicly backed him, the Enquirer said.

.....Congratulations to Troy Balderson on a great win in Ohio. A very special and important race!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 8, 2018

The Franklin County Board of Elections said the absentee and provisional ballots will be counted by Aug. 24, the Enquirer said.

Trump won the district by 11 percentage points in the 2016 presidential election, according to the Columbus Dispatch.

The Dispatch said that despite the tightness of the race, O'Connor is still a longshot. The newspaper said he still needs to win 57 percent of the uncounted ballots to make up the current deficit. The newspaper said even that number assumes the unlikelihood that all the absentee and provisional ballots will be valid and counted.

"For a Democrat to come as close as O'Connor did is remarkable," Paul Beck, an emeritus political science professor at Ohio State, told the Dispatch. "It sends a good signal for Democrats nationwide in terms of continuing the momentum of a possible blue wave in November."

Mark Caleb Smith, director of the Center for Political Studies at Cedarville University, said Democrats cannot count on moral victories if they plan to win.

"Given how narrow the Republican advantage is in the U.S. House, the Democrats have a real opportunity to win the majority, but they need to win some of these tight elections," Smith told the newspaper.

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