It (sorta) took two days, but the votes cast in last week’s municipal election have all been counted.

After about 15 hours of counting, the county’s Board of Elections wrapped up counting write-in votes and paper ballots at about 12:30 a.m. Saturday morning.

The process started at 9 a.m. on Friday.

Each of the approximately 2,400 ballots with write-in votes had to be reviewed individually in addition to paper ballots that were cast at some locations in an attempt to reduce voter wait times.

Republicans Ben Kafferlin and Tricia Durbin finished with 4,931 and 4,757 votes, respectively, to secure two seats on the next board of commissioners.

The third seat went to Democrat Jeff Eggleston, whose 2,805 votes were enough to defeat Democrat Paul Giannini, who finished with 2,173 votes.

Of the 1,104 write-in votes cast, Connie Zaffino finished with 914 votes while current Commissioner Cindy Morrison received 77 write-in votes.

In the city, John Wortman (1,171), Christian Zavinski (1,065) and Phil Gilbert (824) won seats on Warren City Council with Douglas Hearn (793) and Aaron Stearns (777) coming up short.

In the race for the only contested seat on the Warren County School Board, Kevin Lindvay defeated Kim Angove 1,636 to 987.

The Times Observer was unable to procure the results until Tuesday as the courthouse was closed over the weekend and on Monday and the count was not completed by press time.

Elections Director Lisa Rivett said that paper ballots were used in some precincts – Pine Grove, Glade and Pleasant – where fewer machines meant longer lines.

While there’s an adjustment to the machines – and fewer machines overall – that made last week’s election challenging, Rivett “absolutely” thinks it was the right decision to roll out the new machines this fall rather than in a presidential primary next spring.

“Everyone got a feel for the machines,” she said, acknowledging that there will be a conversation that takes place to discuss purchasing additional machines or potentially shifting to the alternative – all paper ballots.

Rivett said that a change to paper ballots would require one machine at each precinct for people with disabilities and the county to produce enough ballots at each precinct to cover 110 percent of a given precinct’s total number of voters.

With 27.75 percent turnout in last week’s election, it’s safe to say that’s a lot of wasted paper.

Rivett said paper ballots can still be scanned – manual vote counting would not be required – but noted that the Board of Elections would have additional issues to adjudicate.

Last week, the board adjudicated write-in votes on the printed ballots from the machine. On paper ballots, they would have to adjudicate write-in votes as well in addition to “ambiguous marks” as well as instances where people over-vote.

The decision of how to proceed is likely to fall to the county commissioners, who typically serve as the board of elections except for years – like this one – where they are up for election. Veterans Affairs Director Ed Burris, County Planner Dan Glotz and H.R. Administrator Kim Exley currently comprise the board.

That will revert to the newly-elected board of commissioners in January once they are sworn-in.