Thus, the Ohio General Assembly, the Secretary, and, at some point, the FCBE all envisioned that poll workers would be responsible for verifying not only that a voter signed his PBA form, but also that the voter properly affirmed the ballot as contemplated by Ohio law. To be sure, where any county board of elections accepts a Provisional Ballot without a complete voter affirmation, including a poll worker verification statement, that situation is attributable to the poll worker's failure to perform his statutorily prescribed role and constitutes poll worker error. As noted, there are three disputed categories of provisional ballots at issue in this case: (1) ballots where a voter has signed the affirmation but failed to print her name; (2) ballots where the voter provided a printed name on the affirmation but failed to include a signature; (3) ballots that include both a voter signature and the voter's printed name, where the signature, the printed name, or both were written on the wrong portion of the Application. As described above, Section
§ 3505.181(B)(2) imposes an affirmative duty on poll workers to not accept a ballot if the affirmation is not executed in front of the poll worker, and
section 3505.183(B)(1)(a) requires that an affirmation contain a name and signature. A ballot could not be accepted without a name and signature in the affirmation unless there was poll worker error. In addition,
Section 3505.182 provides that the poll worker should sign a “Verification Statement” that the affirmation was subscribed and affirmed before the poll worker. Thus, for all three categories, the Secretary's interpretation prevails because the “deficiencies” in these ballots are the result of poll worker error, which pursuant to this Court's Order cannot invalidate a ballot.