Ohio’s largest county voted this week to defy Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted on his directive prohibiting county boards of elections from mailing out absentee ballot applications to all registered voters.

But Husted, a Republican and former Kettering resident, said Wednesday in a meeting at the Dayton Daily News that Cuyahoga County doesn’t have the legal right to ignore his directive.

“It’s very important that we have the same set of rules whereby we cast and count ballots in all 88 counties,” Husted said.

The Cuyahoga County Council voted unanimously on Monday to go ahead and pay to have the applications mailed out countywide, said County Executive Ed FitzGerald. He said that Cuyahoga County hopes to have the applications mailed out to all registered voters by the beginning of October.

FitzGerald said Cuyahoga County — along with four other urban counties, including Montgomery — began mailing out absentee ballot applications after the 2004 presidential election when many urban polling places experienced long lines on Election Day.

“In places like Cuyahoga County, you had voters who were waiting for hours and hours and hours in the rain to vote, and sometimes just gave up,” FitzGerald said.

The option to mail absentee applications was given to counties in the aftermath of that election, and some counties took advantage, while others didn’t feel they needed to.

“We needed that and it worked,” FitzGerald said. “We haven’t had those problems since then.”

Husted said he supported House Bill 194, which was passed by the Legislature and signed into law this summer, because it laid out a clear set of guidelines on how counties should conduct elections.

But some county elections officers and other critics say the new election law, which makes scores of changes to elections including new limitations on early voting, doesn’t give counties latitude to deal with different populations.

The law has been challenged by Fair Elections Ohio, which is now gathering signatures to put a repeal of the elections law on the ballot. The group, which is backed by former Democratic Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, has until the end of September to collect more than 231,000 signatures. If they are successful, the law will be put on hold until the November 2012 election when voters will decide the issue.

One of the guidelines in the new law is the prohibition of mailing out absentee ballot applications to all registered voters. Husted says if the big counties are doing it, every county should, but the smaller counties can’t afford it.

The different elections practices, he said, “creates unequal access to the polls and undermines confidence in the system.”

Steve Harsman, director of the Montgomery County Board of Elections, is critical of the law because it goes against what the voters in his county have wanted.

“Basically, over the last four or five years, every decision we’ve made has been to follow the trend of more and more people voting absentee or in person,” Harsman said.

As a result the county has mailed out the ballot applications and extended the hours for early in-person voting in an effort to meet that demand. In addition, they’ve consolidated precincts and polling stations to save money.

“Our position is a logistical one, and it’s for the benefit of the citizens of Montgomery County,” Harsman said.

Husted would not comment on the likelihood of filing a lawsuit against Cuyahoga County, but he said he — and the entire state — deserves an answer to the question of who’s in charge of elections.

“Can counties just run elections however they want?” Husted said. “Can any government entity intervene and be part of the elections process?

“That’s the fundamental question that needs to be answered. I believe the law and the constitution clearly puts this in the hands of the secretary of state and the boards of elections.”