“The trend is an obvious one,” O’Farrell says. “The more votes that get counted, the closer we get to narrowing that deficit. There are still 170 rejected provisional and absentee ballots that have not been counted in this race. It does not take a math major to figure out what’s going to happen if even a portion of those provisional and absentee ballots are counted.”

O’Farrell says some of the disqualified ballots were at the fault of poll workers and voters who mistakenly wrote the present date on the line where they should have written their date of birth. He says he may take his challenge to the Ohio Secretary of State or to the courts.  

However, Landis says election officials did everything fair and by the books.

Landis on handling of recount.

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“The bi-partisan board—two Republicans and two Democrats—voted four-to-zero to certify the election,” Landis says. “They’ve done their job, they’ve counted every legal ballot, all of the challenges have been addressed. The ruling by the Secretary of State was to follow the law and I believe the Board of Elections has done just that.” 

Despite O’Farrell’s expected challenge, Landis says he plans to continue to represent the 98^th House District when lawmakers return for next year’s session.