No issues reported as voting gets underway in Cuyahoga County

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Voting in the 2024 presidential election is officially underway in Cuyahoga County and across Northeast Ohio.

As of 8:45 a.m., the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections is reporting no issues or concerns at any of its polling locations.

As is common on Election Day, some voting machines that scan the ballots have become jammed or encountered other routine issues this morning. But that's no cause for concern, said Jeff Grajewski, the board's outreach coordinator.

Staff stationed at the Board of Elections will call such polling locations by phone and will attempt to talk the poll workers through a fix. If that fails, the board will send a new machine to the location as soon as possible, he said.

If the wait is a little long in those scenarios, hang tight. Grajewski said that voters can rest assured those types of issues will not affect the election.

"That doesn't stop the election at all," he said. "We're just going to keep going and making sure that we get those machines up. Every vote that we have out there, we're going to make sure that it counts."

There's expected to be a large turnout of in-person voters today, as is typical during presidential years, so lines are expected at some locations, Grajewski said. Plus, about 30,000 fewer people voted by mail compared to the 2016 election, so board workers are expecting those voters to show up at the polls, leading to potentially longer lines at some points in the day.

"I get that there's going to be long lines, but it's a beautiful day, so we just encourage people to be patient, and be sure that they cast their votes," Grajewski said.

Nearly 219,000 Cuyahoga County residents cast their ballots before Election Day, through mail-in voting, or early voting at the board of elections.

For voters who opted to cast their ballots today at their neighborhood polling locations, over 84,000 had turned out by 9 a.m., according to the board.