News
Ohio’s early vote is over. All eyes are now on Election Day
By: Jo Ingles | Statehouse News Bureau
Posted on:
COLUMBUS, Ohio (Statehouse News Bureau) — The lines were long at some county boards of elections around Ohio on Sunday, the final day of early voting for the 2026 election.
Columbus resident Demetria Peacher was one of the first voters to cast an early ballot on the last day of early voting in Franklin County on Sunday. She said she got in the front of the line that snaked around the end of the building around 10 a.m. after going to church. She said she waited about three hours to cast her ballot because this election is important to her.
“I work in non-profit so with everything that’s going on now, we don’t have the funding to do things we’d love to do to help people in just meeting basic needs,” Peacher said.
“Health care is hard to come by, and the current administration makes it so intermittent. They try to take it away in the midst of your treatment, so that’s very important to me,” Brad said.
He and others said they were voting for candidates who will lower costs of living that have ballooned out of control.
The current political climate is a problem for Okema Graham, who said she is tired of it.
“Just the rhetoric that we are all dealing with. Just so much negative publicity. We just want to support a positive political environment,” Graham said.
Voters were still standing in line past 6 p.m. last night, more than an hour after the polls closed.
Other parts of the state also reported heavy turnout this past weekend. Ohio’s early vote has already passed the total from the 2022 midterm election. A total of 399,918 of Ohio’s 8,956,209 registered voters cast early ballots in this November’s election.
Polls are open from 6:30 a.m. till 7 p.m. tomorrow. Absentee ballots that haven’t yet been mailed back should be taken to county boards of elections before polls close.