Republicans in Washington won control of the Senate in last week’s election and are likely to hold onto the House as well as they wait for a handful of races to be called across the country, and a week after Election Day remains extremely close.
One such race involves Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur’s bid for a record 22nd term against Republican State Rep. Derek Merrin. Election night vote totals left Kaptur with a narrow 1,200 vote lead or just 0.3 percent.
Decision Desk HQ called the race for Kaptur, who put out a news release shortly after that to celebrate her win. However, other outlets like AP, ABC, and CNN have yet to make a call, and Merrin has yet to concede, citing the number of provisional and vote-by-mail ballots still to be counted. But the deadline for absentees to be received and provisionals to be reconciled was this past Saturday at 5 p.m., so why haven’t the numbers been updated?
Nothing nefarious, says Ohio’s chief elections officer; it’s just the process.
“To be clear, there’s only two times that under Ohio law we can tabulate and release the results of an election,” said Secretary of State Frank LaRose. One is election night, and the other is when all of the provisional ballots are “cured,” or the voter’s information verified and the outstanding vote by mail ballots returned. In Ohio this year, they numbered around 220,000.