News
Phillips Retains Ohio House Seat In Offiicial Vote Count
By: Steve Robb - Athens Messenger staff reporter
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State Rep. Debbie Phillips, D-Albany, retained her 94th District seat during the official vote count of general election results completed Friday, and widened her margin of victory over Republican challenger Yolan Dennis of Fleming.
The official count has Phillips winning by a vote of 14,765 to 14,371, for a margin of 394 votes. In the unofficial Nov. 4 election-night tally, Phillips had edged Dennis by 194 votes.
"I think it's going to be a challenging time for Ohio and a challenging time at the Statehouse. I'm glad to have the opportunity to work for and with the people of Southeast Ohio," Phillips said Friday.
She said there are a lot of issues at the state level, and the atmosphere is very partisan.
"The more we can keep people involved in the process, the better," she said.
The official count includes provisional ballots and absentee ballots not counted election night. Although there were enough of those ballots to theoretically reverse the election-night result, that was unlikely given the distribution of those uncounted ballots among the district's counties.
The district includes all of Meigs County, all of Phillips' home base of Athens County except for Trimble Twp., only about half of Washington County where Dennis lives and only part of Vinton County.
In Athens County, there were 543 provisional and absentee ballots added into the 94th District results, greater than the other three counties combined.
In the overall balloting, it was Athens County that gave Phillips her victory.
Athens County, because it is the most populous county and therefore must certify the overall results, conducted its official count last among the four counties. With Meigs, Vinton and Washington Counties tallied earlier in the week, the official counts in those counties had Dennis ahead, 9,612 to 6,020. Dennis won Meigs by 3,382 to 2,471 and Washington by 5,763 to 2,893, with Phillips coming out ahead in Vinton County, 656-567. In Athens County, where Phillips won nearly 65 percent of the vote, she bested Dennis by a tally of 8,745 to 4,759.