Ohio must redesign absentee ballot envelopes

By Marc Kovac

news@vindy.com

COLUMBUS

Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted has given local elections officials until midyear to redesign their absentee-ballot envelopes as part of an effort to ensure the mailings receive the required postmark and are counted.

The redesign was one of eight administrative moves included in a directive issued Friday by Husted to help address postmark issues that surfaced after the November general election, when hundreds of mail-in ballots – that number included about 900 in Summit County and dozens in Portage County – were not counted because they did not include valid postmarks.

“When a ballot is cast by an eligible voter who followed all of the rules, their vote should count,” Husted said in a released statement.

Under a requirement that’s been in place for almost a decade, absentee ballots must be mailed by the Monday before Election Day. (Those ballots also can be submitted in person to local election boards on Election Day.)

To be counted, the mail-in ballots must have valid postmarks, among other requirements.

After postmark issues that came to light in November, the secretary of state contacted the U.S. Postal Service to discuss the problem.

According to the directive, Husted’s office identified two issues in subsequent conversations with postal officials: delivery of first-class mail generally takes two to five days, and flat-size envelopes such as the ones used for absentee ballots, “generally receive a lower percentage of postmarks.”

To address those issues, Husted ordered elections officials to include a “special notice” with absentee ballots outlining the requirements for submitting the early ballots.

For the November presidential election, elections boards also must redesign envelopes used to return absentee ballots, with recommendations for using “letter-sized” envelopes to “increase the likelihood of postmarking.”

Husted also directed elections officials to refer to printed bar codes marked on envelopes by the post office as another form of postmark, if they can be used to confirm ballots were mailed on time.

The ACLU of Ohio voiced support for the directive Friday.

“No voter should be disenfranchised because of a technicality,” Mike Brickner, the group’s senior policy director, said in a statement. “Early voting is extremely popular in Ohio and should be convenient and simple for voters to use.”