CINCINNATI, Ohio — Election officials across the state are re-counting the ballots from the May primary.

What You Need To Know

  • All of Ohio's 88 counties are hand-counting votes from the May primary in a post-election audit 

  • Election officials say the state selects three contests for them to audit, and election workers roll the dice to see which ballots they'll hand count 

  • Election officials also say they check machines and do extensive trainings before the election to check for errors 

It’s literally a roll of the dice to see what ballots will be re-counted after an election. 

“Depending on the roll of the dice, it might be ballots that were cast at a polling place on election day…or it could be batches that were cast absentee," said Hamilton County Board of Elections Director Sherry Poland. 

She said it's what they do after every election. The state randomly selects three contests for them to audit. Then, the bipartisan board of elections team separates the ballots by vote, hand-counts them and compares it to the machine count.

“If there's a mistake, the first thing we do is to go back and check the hand counts, and that's where we find the mistake," Poland said. "We put a ballot in the wrong stack or just simply miscounted, so we’ll recount the hand count."

It’s a process all of Ohio’s 88 counties have to do after an election to make sure the results are accurate, but Poland said it’s not only after an election that they’re double checking everything. 

“We are hand marking test ballots prior to election day and then running those through the scanners in the equipment and tabulating electronic test results and hand counting the paper test ballots and making sure that the system is counting accurately," Poland said.

She said there’s also extensive poll worker training, voter registration list updates and public oversight of the process to make sure every vote counts. 

“We say we proof proof and proof again," Poland said.