Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose on Thursday praised Knox County during the official ribbon-cutting for the new Board of Elections offices in the old Central School Building at 104 East Sugar St. in Mount Vernon.
“The building is worth celebrating,” he told the Mount Vernon News. “But more important is the work that happens inside that building. The work that the Board of Election does on a daily basis is sometimes taken for granted.”
Ohio has honest elections, he said.
“Every voice can be heard in an accessible and fair contest,” LaRose said. “That’s something that has made Ohio in many ways an example for the rest of the nation to follow. We’re sort of the gold standard for elections administration here in the Buckeye State.”
The 2020 election was a difficult election to administer as the state and country were coping with the COVID-19 pandemic, LaRose said.
“It was kind of a perfect storm of challenges,” he said. “But we faced it head on.”
A guiding principle was “you sweat in training so you won’t bleed in battle,” said LaRose.
Although 2020 was a challenging election, it was also a successful one, he said.
“It was because of everyone pulling together and doing the hard work,” said LaRose.
In fact, by every metric, Ohio’s election in 2020 was the most successful the state has ever had, he said.
“We set turnout records. We had a record number of poll workers. We had a record low number of provisional ballots,” said LaRose. “When it was hardest to do elections, Ohio did it right.”
The Ariel Foundation partnered with Knox County Commissioners to renovate the former Central School building, built in 1939, the foundation said on its website.
The elections board occupies the lower floor/basement, which faces Sugar Street.
A bipartisan audit last year showed a 99.98% accuracy rate for the 2020 general election in Ohio, said LaRose. “It you look at kind turnout we’re having, 2016, 2018 and even 2020 were all record-setting years. That’s good news. People are passionate about elections.”
