WOOD COUNTY, Ohio — Dustin Tyson has been been a volunteer with the Wood County Board of Elections for years, helping with early voting every spring. But he says this year it's clearly different.
"I would say of all the elections I've worked before this is probably the slowest one," he said Tuesday.
Tuesday was the first day of early voting in Ohio. By late morning, only eight voters had turned up to cast ballots at the Wood County Courthouse in Bowling Green.
Voters who showed up could vote in only a portion of what should appear on Ohio's primary ballot. That's because proposed redistricting maps repeatedly shot down by the Ohio Supreme Court as unconstitutional gerrymanders, forcing election officials to use only a partial ballot for the May 3 primary.
The only races voters find on that ballot will be partisan primaries for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, governor, secretary of state and various local races and ballot questions.
State legislative races are being delayed because no set of district boundaries has been settled on long enough to be used for making ballots.
When the maps are approved, there will be a second primary in the coming months. Gov. Mike DeWine said he doesn't want the confusion to stop people from voting.
"What people need to remember is everything is going to be on the ballot in may except for legislative districts and state central committee districts. Those are the only two things that aren't going to be on there. All of the other statewide races are there, local races, some school levies are up, so this is a very important election," DeWine said.
Gov. DeWine is a member of the redistricting commission responsible for the maps now at the center of the court fight. He defends the proposed districts, saying they're in line with what voters wanted.
"One of the goals that voters had, and voters were told they were going to see a lot more competitive districts, it turned out, they're going to see less, fewer competitive districts frankly because of the supreme court decisions along with the constitution and that's not good," DeWine said.
With lawmakers in Columbus still trying to sort out the fallout of this incident themselves, elections officials like Tyson say they'd be happy to answer any questions from voters.
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