Add Mahoning County to the list of counties outperforming 2006 early vote turnout

Franklin, Cuyahoga, Montgomery, and now Mahoning County have either already outpaced or likely to outpace the 2006 Early Vote.

From WKBN 27 in Youngstown:

The Mahoning County Board of Elections said this is a busier than normal off-year election.

"It’s been very busy compared to the 2006 governor’s election," Mahoning County Board of Elections Deputy Director Joyce Kale-Pesta said. "We counted 14,000 absentees at that time and right now we’re at 17,420."

The Board of Elections is expecting 25,000 absentee votes this year, and with the polls tightening up in the governors race, the Board of Elections doesn’t expect a slow down in ballots anytime soon.

"It does show people are interested in the election because they wouldn’t come in here and vote if they weren’t," Kale-Pesta said. "So they don’t want to forget to vote so they come early and vote."

Despite unveiling one of his three signature “policy proposals” (job retraining) in Youngstown, Kasich and the rest of the Ohio GOP statewide ticket is conspicuously ignoring the Youngstown region during its one and only unified ticket bus tour this campaign.

Kasich, and the Ohio GOP, are ignoring all of southern Ohio, Eastern Ohio, and the Canton-Akron-Youngstown region.  Last week, Kasich promised he’d focus on a southern Ohio like a laser beam as Governor.  And then he left, never to campaign there again.

Apparently, the Ohio GOP doesn’t believe a unified Republican front doesn’t need to be shown in Boccieri, Space, Sutton, and Wilson’s districts.  And yet, we’re supposed to believe that these are regions the Ohio GOP is credibly targeting this election.  Pretty much most of these stops are traditional GOP strongholds.  It’s about pumping up the base for Kasich, not really expanding the playing field.