President Trump traveled to Ohio to stump for GOP Congressional candidate Troy Balderson in Columbus’ 12th District, where voters cast their ballots in a special election to replace the remainder of ex-Rep. Pat Tiberi’s term as a US Congressman.
After the election, it was announced that the Trump-endorsed candidate, Troy Balderson was the victor by a margin of over 1,500 votes.
After the special election, Cleveland.com reported – With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Balderson had a 1,754-vote lead over O’Connor, with more than 202,000 votes cast.
O’Connor declined to concede the race Tuesday night, telling supporters “We’re not stopping now!” News outlets, including the Associated Press, also did not call the race, citing the number of uncounted absentee and provisional ballots.
And then suddenly, out of nowhere, 588 uncounted votes show up in a Columbus suburb…
“The votes from a portion of one voting location had not been processed into the tabulation system,” officials explained. “Election night results are tabulated through the use of a device called a master PEB that is returned to the Board along with flash drives from each machine. The Griswold Center voting location had two master PEB’s, only one of which was read and processed into the tabulation system on Election Night. The additional votes identified during this preliminary audit will be reflected in the final official results certified by the Board of Elections on August 24th.”
Balderson’s Democrat opponent, Danny O’Connor took to Twitter to ask Democrats to donate money to make sure “EVERY LAST VOTE is counted fairly”? Do Democrats really need to donate money to make sure votes are counted fairly? What does this even mean?
🚨 6:05 PM UPDATE 🚨
We just netted 190 VOTES from Franklin County!
We're confident DANNY WILL WIN once ALL the votes are counted, but we spent EVERYTHING we had on the Special Election.
Please donate $5 to make sure EVERY LAST VOTE is counted fairly.https://t.co/c4xUZd1ngr
— Danny O'Connor (@dannyoconnor1) August 8, 2018
The Cincinnati Enquirer is reporting that 3,435 provisional ballots and 5,048 absentee ballots will be counted by the August 24 deadline.
O’Connor continues to campaign on his Twitter account:
Door to door, house to house — we made our case for change. And it’s still not over.
We are SO CLOSE to doing the impossible, and flipping #OH12 blue for the first time in 35 years.
➡️Let’s keep the momentum going ➡️ https://t.co/VRkeyMeTqO pic.twitter.com/nT7cUe9MDr
— Danny O'Connor (@dannyoconnor1) August 10, 2018