Ohio's Franklin County Pivots To Paper After Early Computer Problems

Early morning voters in Ohio saw one county revert to old-school voting methods. The state's most populous county had to switch to paper pollbooks after its digital voter check-in systems failed.

Franklin County election officials discovered Tuesday morning that their computers would not load the full list of registered voters, prompting them to move to a backup method.

In a statement posted to Twitter, which has since gone viral, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose's communication team revealed ballots were not affected by the hiccup, only check-in machines. Early votes were also fine and have been recorded properly.

Franklin County quickly trended on Twitter after the tech issue was confirmed with a majority of commenters criticizing the county for the error. Some asked why the problem wasn’t caught in testing.

Ohio is a battleground state vital to President Donald Trump's reelection chances. Once a Republican stronghold, the state is now seen as vulnerable for the right due to Trump's divisive rhetoric and a devastating COVID-19 surge that engulfed the state.

Both Trump and Joe Biden have made frequent appearances there on the campaign trail, and Michael Bloomberg even funded a last-minute ad blitz in favor of the Democratic candidate. The latest polls out of Ohio show Biden with a narrow lead of 4%.

While some Twitter commenters appear suspicious about Franklin County's move to paper check-ins, others said they didn't notice a slowdown when it came to in-person voting.