(Lakeville, Ohio)  The Primary battle to determine which Republican will face Zack Space in the fall will result in a victory for Bob Gibbs.  With all precincts reporting, Gibbs holds a 164 vote lead over Fred Dailey, Gibbs’ next closest competitor in the 8-way field.

Initial reports had the number of outstanding ballots to be counted in the thousands, but upon further detailed county-by-county review and breakdown of outstanding ballots, that number is actually only a few hundred remaining Republican ballots that were cast in the race for Congress.

Even if Dailey were to win the remaining ballots by the same percentage that he won his home county – and there is no reason to believe that will happen - he would still lose.  A mandatory recount is also unlikely to change the result.

“In this era of modern electronic voting equipment the chances for a math error of this size is highly unlikely” said Terry Casey, who has overseen close elections as Chairman of the Franklin County Board of Elections and who had done election recounts in over 30 counties in Ohio.
 

Of the approximately 1,100 absentee ballots that had been requested but not returned by last Tuesday, only 116 have been received, and most counties believe they would be in receipt of any ballot that was postmarked in time. That figure also includes Democrat and minor party ballots as well as issue only voters, and does not take into consideration ballots that are not likely to be counted, or ballot drop-off.  “The reality is that the total Republican absentee ballots in that group will be much, much smaller,” said Matt Borges, spokesman for Gibbs. 

Of the absentee ballots confirmed to have come in, the largest total (43) came from Gibbs home county, Holmes, where he defeated Dailey by a margin of 2,048 to 145.  Only eight such ballots had been reported received in Knox County, Dailey’s home county.

Further, the number of provisional ballots that will be counted will be drastically reduced from the approximately 1,200 that were initially reported.

“Only about 400 hundred provisional ballots will be qualified by state law counted in this race.  Those uncounted ballots will be divided up between the eight candidates.  That means making up a 164 vote margin among the remaining net republican ballots is next to impossible” Casey concluded.

“We respect the process that will ultimately confirm the result in this race,” said Borges.  “But this Primary is over and Bob Gibbs won.”

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