12:20 p.m. update
• One of the poll workers didn’t show up this morning to work at St. Barbara’s Catholic Church in Massillon.
Voters, however, were able to vote with paper ballots until supplies and equipment were delivered.
“No one was turned away,” said Jeanette Mullane, deputy director of the Stark County Board of Elections.
• Wayne County had a problem with the E-poll books Tuesday morning. Poll workers weren’t able to swipe voters’ driver’s licenses to check them in and instead had to enter their information manually.
“It didn’t hamper the check in,” said Julie Leathers, director of the Wayne County Board of Elections. “It was just a convenience issue.”
This is the second election in which the board has used electronic poll books, which are aimed at speeding up the process for voters to check in at a polling place and determine where they need to vote. The board also used them in November.
Leathers said most of the E-poll books are now working.
11:10 a.m. update
Spotted on Facebook: “If anyone in Ohio has trouble voting, the Ohio Democratic Party is running a voter protection center. Please call 614-221-6563 to report any problems at the polls.”
In an e-mail, Ohio Democratic Party Communications Director Kirstin Alvanitakis confirmed that the party has attorneys at the state party’s headquarters ready to work on any voter issues.
10:40 a.m. update
• Three polling places in Medina County have been experiencing intermittent power failures this morning.
Carol Lawler, director of the Medina County Board of Elections, said the board has battery backup at each of the polling places for the electronic voting machines and the new E-poll books that the board is using for the first time. She said the board is reaching out to the power companies about the outages.
The outages haven’t disrupted voting, Lawler said.
• Campaigners at three polling places in Medina County were asked to move farther back.
They must be 100 feet or more away from the polling place entrance.
Lawler said she had elections board employees re-measure the 100-foot mark.
10:23 a.m. update
• Voters leaving the Rustic Hills Country Club polling place in Montville Township in Medina County were met with an exit poll worker — an unusual occurrence at that polling place. For one voter, the one-page, two-sided Democratic questionnaire asked questions about how much gender played into the voters’s decision and how much such things as health care, the economy and terrorism played into the vote. The poll also asked separate questions about how realistic a chance Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders had of getting their agenda passed. The poll also asked a four-pronged question about how much the voter agreed with the agenda and whether the voter would support the other candidate if the voter’s candidate did not win.
It was unclear who sponsored the exit poll, though it had logos for several national media outlets. The poll worker was attempting to survey all voters leaving the polling place.
9:45 a.m. update
• Two Summit County polling places opened later than the 6:30 a.m. start of voting because a poll worker overslept at one and a janitor slept in at the other. The polling places were: Community Vineyard Church in Cuyahoga Falls and St. Cosmos and Damian Church in Twinsburg.
A Twinsburg voter sent an email to Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s office, complaining about not being able to vote. Husted’s office is going to forward the email to the Summit County Board of Elections, which will reach out to the voter.
Elections board Director Joe Masich said if the voter isn’t able to return to the polls, the board will send out a team of election workers to wherever the voter is so that he or she can cast a ballot.
Voters also weren’t able to vote first thing at the Falls polling place, but the board doesn’t know who they are, Masich said.
After the ballots and materials were delivered to the Twinsburg polling place, the poll worker who overslept was fired, Masich said.
• The Summit County Board of Elections is being powered by a large generator provided by Ohio Edison.
An electrical transformer at the board, located at 470 Grant St. in Akron, was found Monday evening to be leaking oil. The board contacted Ohio Edison and Summit County, and Ohio Edison shut down the transformer and hooked up a generator that began providing power to the building about 8 p.m. Monday. The board has another generator on standby if needed, Masich said.
“Everything seems to be working fine,” Masich said.
Ohio Edison will repair the transformer after the election, likely on Thursday, Masich said.
Masich thanked Randy Frame, the regional president for Ohio Edison, for the company’s quick response. He said Frame came to the board himself.
“Of all days, we really need plenty of electricity,” Masich said.
9:30 update
• More Trump than Kasich signs greeted voters at Presentation of Our Lord Church in Fairlawn this morning. No candidates or campaigns stood outside the church, though, in the chilly, damp conditions.
Many voters had to search through books in the church lobby to figure out which of the three precincts was theirs. Inside, a line of people waited to vote at one precinct — not a common occurrence in recent elections — while voters had no waits at the other two.
• The flow of voters was “steady,” said a poll worker at the Summit Developmental Disabilities Board site on West Exchange Street, which serves three precincts in West Akron’s Ward 4. She speculated the gloomy weather may be keeping turnout down. At 8:45 a.m., one voter was number 22 in her precinct for her party affiliation and saw about 20 voters between the three precinct tables.
The voter reported that “usually there are one or two people stumping in the parking lot there, but not this morning.”
8:30 a.m. update
Based on early voting absentee results by Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, as of March 4, the top 10 Ohio counties that cast the most absentee ballots were: Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton, Summit, Lorain, Stark, Lucas, Mahoning, Montgomery and Butler.
The director of the Hamilton County Board of Elections Sherry Poland says people were in line before polls opened at some locations. Poland says voting seems to be moving smoothly with election officials predicting around a 40 to 45 percent turnout before polls close at 7:30 p.m.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich is counting heavily on his home state to give him is first win in the campaign as he goes up against Donald Trump and the other Republican candidates in the presidential race. Bernie Sanders is challenging Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side.
8 a.m. update
Happy Election Day.
Polls are open today until 7:30 p.m. To check your polling location or to see a sample ballot, go to www.myohiovote.com. Bring a current and valid driver’s license, a military ID or an original or copy of a utility bill, bank statement, paycheck or other government document issued in the past 12 months.
Quiet polls
At the Northhampton Primary School, a small polling place with only one precinct voting in Cuyahoga Falls, early voting was quiet with 24 voters having voted by 7:45 a.m.
Early results
In a press release on Monday, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted said 500,544 absentee ballots were requested by-mail and in-person for the March 15 Presidential Primary Election. By the close of early voting on Monday afternoon, 417,537 voters had already cast their ballots.
Here is some information based on an informal survey of Ohio’s 88 county boards of elections on Monday:
• 500,544 absentee ballot applications received statewide
• 417,537 absentee ballots have been cast
• 255,307 absentee ballots cast by mail
• 162,230 absentee ballots cast in-person
• 83,007 absentee ballots outstanding
The same survey shows the following partisan breakdown of the ballots:
226,710 Democrat ballots were requested and 187,570 were cast, 258,756 Republican ballots were requested and 222,927 were cast, 895 Green Party ballots were requested with 304 cast and 14,183 Issues-Only, Nonpartisan ballots were requested with 6,736 cast.
In total, 335,542 voters cast their ballots early during the 2012 Presidential Primary Election and 557,686 did so during the 2008 Presidential Primary.