LISBON — Columbiana County Board of Elections Director Kim Fusco said she’s predicting a voter turnout of 20% for today’s election.

Board members for the county Board of Elections met Monday to finalize plans for the primary election, allocating at least 29,200 printed ballots and allocating voting machines for all 73 precincts, with some polling locations serving more than one precinct. The polls are open from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. today for voting.

A second DS200 optical scanner was allocated to the following multi-precinct polling locations: East Palestine Church of Christ, Fairfield Township Government Center, Hanover Township United Local Schools, St. Clair Township Administration Building and Wellsville High School.

She reported that 1,405 ballots were cast in person at the Board of Elections office in Lisbon, with another 640 absentee ballots to be counted so far. The deadline for submitting an absentee ballot is today, even ballots that are mailed, with the exception of oversees ballots.

The board reviewed and agreed to the remaking of four absentee ballots to reflect intent, with two having unclear marks and two ballots unreadable but with the intent of the voter obvious on all four.

The board also agreed to have 13 ballots rejected as overvotes run through the scanner again, with six true overvotes meaning the votes for those particular races won’t count, but the votes for the rest of the ballot will count, and seven where the voter intent was obvious and an errant mark made it appear to be an overvote.

“I think all of these are pretty straight forward,” board member Charley Kidder, the Columbiana County Democratic Party Chairman, said.

As for the number of ballots printed, Fusco said she looked at the 2022 primary when $14,462 ballots were cast. The board is required to print a total of at least 5% more than the total number of voters that voted in the last comparable election. With 29,200 ballots printed, Fusco said no problem is foreseen, with ballots expected to be left over.

Board Chairman David Johnson, who’s also the Columbiana County Republican Party Chairman, said there’s no chance they won’t have enough ballots.

In other business, the board approved chargebacks from the Nov. 4, 2025 election totaling $100,579, which is the total of what the various subdivisions will pay back for having something on that ballot, with the totals prorated, and then for ballot printing for each subdivision and for legal ads for those entities which had legal ads printed. Not all did.

The breakdown was $70,698 for the subdivisions, $22,308 for ballot printing and $7,571 for legal ads.

The board also updated their incident response plan or cyber security plan and also approved the bills for February, March and April totaling $239,970. The board will reconvene tonight

In other election news, no Independents filed by the 4 p.m. deadline for the November 2026 election, which means Republican county officeholders Commissioner Mike Halleck, Auditor Nancy Gause Milliken and Probate/Juvenile Court Judge Thomas Baronzzi will be unopposed in November, unless there’s a write-in. No Democrats filed for commissioner, auditor or Probate/Juvenile Court judge.

mgreier@mojonews.com