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Ohio Already Approaching Record Level Of Absentee Ballot Requests

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (Statehouse News Bureau) — More than twice as many absentee applications have been received from Ohio voters than at this point four years ago, when a record number of early votes were cast in a presidential election in Ohio.

Secretary of State Frank LaRose reports just under 1.8 million applications have been mailed or turned in, two weeks before early voting begins on October 6.

And stats from local boards of elections continue to show requests from Democratic-affiliated voters are outpacing those from Republicans.

At this point in 2016, nearly 806,000 applications had been sent in. By the end of the last presidential election, 1.4 million absentee ballots were requested.

But around 1.5 million were requested in 2008, which was the first year for early absentee voting in a presidential election and a record year for voter registration.

Absentee voters can drop off their election ballots in this box on Court Street in uptown Athens.
Absentee voters can drop off their election ballots in this box on Court Street in uptown Athens. [David Forster | WOUB]


 
However, this total so far is short of the nearly 2 million absentee ballots were requested for the spring primary. That became a mail-in-only primary with an extended deadline when the polls were closed just hours before in-person voting was set to begin.