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LaRose orders limits on the use of secure ballot drop boxes in this fall’s election

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (Statehouse News Bureau) — A few days after suggesting to state lawmakers that they ban secure ballot drop boxes entirely, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose has limited their use in this fall’s election.

Absentee voters can drop off their election ballots in this box on Court Street in uptown Athens.
[David Forster | WOUB]
LaRose’s directive to boards of elections said that only the voter can drop the absentee ballot they’re casting into a ballot drop box during early voting. If the ballot is being dropped off by a family member or someone on the list that’s in a state law that took effect last year, that person must come into the board office and sign a form stating they are lawfully assisting that voter.

LaRose said it’s to prevent absentee ballots being collected and delivered all at once. That’s usually done to help elderly and disabled voters or those in rural areas. But Republicans have claimed this practice of ballot harvesting is open to fraud.

A law passed last year limited counties to a single ballot drop box. House Bill 458 also allowed only certain relatives to return ballots for disabled voters: “the voter’s spouse, father, mother, father-in-law, mother-in-law, grandfather, grandmother, brother, or sister of the whole or half blood, or the voter’s son, daughter, adopting parent, adopted child, stepparent, stepchild, uncle, aunt, nephew, or niece.” That part of the law was put on hold in July by a federal court ruling that found it violates a provision of the Voting Rights Act.

“We know that a lot of voters are challenged with reaching the mailbox, sealing the envelope, or getting it to the one county dropbox,” Jen Miller of the League of Women Voters of Ohio said after that decision.

Last week LaRose sent a letter to state lawmakers, suggesting they consider banning ballot drop boxes altogether because they make it hard to guard against ballot harvesting. But Gov. Mike DeWine, who is also a Republican, said for the second time this year he doesn’t want any more changes in Ohio’s voting laws, and that anyone who wants to do so has to prove to him that change is needed.