COLUMBUS – Ohio’s elections chief says Ohio voters have requested almost three times the number of absentee ballots for the Nov. 3 general election as they had at this point in the 2016 election.
Meanwhile, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office has signaled that it will appeal any court order allowing multiple ballot drop boxes in the state’s 88 counties in the wake of a ruling by a Franklin County judge that LaRose’s directive restricting the counties to one drop box in November was “arbitrary and unreasonable.”
With 49 days to go until Election Day, LaRose says 1,398,347 absentee ballot applications have been received by county boards of elections, compared with 524,631 at the same point four years ago.
That includes 199,234 requests received by the Franklin County Board of Elections.
The data is current as of Sept. 11, LaRose said.
Franklin County Common Pleas Court judge Richard Frye ruled on Tuesday that the order forbidding multiple drop boxes was unreasonable, dealing the top elections official in the presidential battleground another in a series of blows to his policies.
LaRose’s office says it will appeal the decision if the judge follows through and invalidates the order.
Access to ballot drop boxes has become an urgent matter nationally amid the coronavirus pandemic and cutbacks at the Postal Service.
“The secretary of state’s directive banning multiple drop boxes is arbitrary and unreasonable, especially during a global pandemic when many more Ohioans want — and need — options for delivering their absentee ballots,” state Democratic Party chair David Pepper said in a statement declaring Frye’s decision a victory.
The Secretary of State’s Office emailed all 88 Ohio county boards of elections today and instructed then of to follow a directive that a court found to be unlawful, in pursuit of a policy the court found had no basis in Ohio law.
Mind boggling.
— David Pepper (@DavidPepper) September 15, 2020
It is often the largely Democratic urban counties that look to expand the number of drop boxes.
Smaller counties have claimed that they may not have the personnel or resources to provide more than one secure drop box, which Republicans say may encourage “ballot harvesting,” a practice of one person delivering the ballots of multiple voters.
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