Delayed ballots and temperature checks: How Ohio is pulling off its first vote-by-mail election – By Liz Skalka (The Blade) / April 25 2002
Practically overnight, the onset of coronavirus in Ohio forced the DeWine administration, elections officials, and state lawmakers to recast the March 17 primary as the state’s first vote-by-mail election, which culminates Tuesday after more than two months of voting.
To make it happen, it’s taken 88 boards of elections, each facing its own trials during the pandemic, to process an enormous volume of absentee ballots, a challenge for which no county was prepared just weeks ago.
All states allow absentee voting in some form, and many offer expanded options for voting by mail. But in Ohio’s case, local boards have had to instantly shift gears to be able to meet the demand.
“It takes a lot more than a notion to do mail elections,” said LaVera Scott, director of the Lucas County Board of Elections. “You need to have the communication lines set up with all of your vendors, all of that. There just wasn’t enough time for us to do those types of things.”
In the past month, Lucas County has brought in extra seasonal employees and sought additional space for handling mail. Workers operate in rooms with no more than 10 people to observe social distancing while processing thousands of absentee ballots and applications. The scale-up needed to happen quickly to process some 50,000 ballot requests in less than a month.
“No board of elections was ready for an all-mail election,” Ms. Scott said. “That’s just a fact.”
Continue to article: https://www.toledoblade.com/local/politics/2020/04/25/ballot-delays-and-temperature-checks-how-ohio-is-pulling-off-its-first-vote-by-mail-election/stories/20200424183
