Today, there’s a better fight to be had.
Last month, an angst-ridden Gov. Mike DeWine said he reluctantly signed a bill that now requires all mail ballots to arrive by Election Day in order to be counted. The bill eliminates a four-day grace period that allowed some late-arriving ballots to be counted.
DeWine cited a looming Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of a grace period for federal elections, a decision that could force Ohio to count state ballots with a grace period and federal ballots without one. Others cited the Department of Justice, which, at the behest of President Trump, said it might sue Ohio over counting late-arriving ballots.
Ohio joins 33 other states that don’t have a grace period, and that’s not a bad thing.
Voters know Election Day falls on the first Tuesday in November. It’s not like Easter, which changes each year. Election Day doesn’t sneak up on people. In Ohio, you can get an absentee ballot 29 days in advance, leaving plenty of time to fill it out, slap a stamp on the envelope, and get it in the mail.
And for the argument that removing the grace period will harm voters, the data from last November’s election shows otherwise. In southwest Ohio, at least 85% of those who requested absentee ballots returned them, including 88% in Montgomery, 89% in Warren, and 90% in Greene counties, according to the Ohio Secretary of State. What’s more, just seven ballots – one in Warren and six in Hamilton ― were counted during the grace period, as were 7,266 across the state.
I’m for making voting as easy as possible, but a grace period for mail-in ballots isn’t the hill to die on.
Ballot drop boxes are, and that’s where DeWine missed an opportunity.
Ohio is one of five states with restrictive policies on drop boxes. The state allows just one per county, which must be located outside the Board of Elections offices. That’s not nearly enough. He, or one of his supporters, could have advocated for a minimum number of drop boxes based on county population as a counter to losing the grace period.
There’s no reason, outside of a desire to stifle voting, that counties can’t have one drop box for every 100,000 residents up to a certain number. Republican and Democratic attorneys general have repeatedly said elections are safe.
Franklin County, with a population of more than 1.3 million, needs more than one. Based on its population of more than 537,000, Montgomery County could have five at locations designated by its Board of Elections.
And I’m not talking about a flood of new drop boxes. Just 15 of the state’s 88 counties have populations of more than 200,000. It would be nice to get more boxes for everyone, but that’s not going to happen, not under this legislature.
There are fights worth having and fights that serve as distractions to bigger problems. The grace period debate takes energy away from other, more important voting issues.
Last November, just six percent of Ohioans used a drop box to deliver their ballots, according to the secretary of state. If we had a few more per country, that number would jump because of the convenience.
This country has a history of making voting hard, and no, it’s not just Republicans (see southern Democrats during Jim Crow).
DeWine had a chance to begin a discussion on making voting easier, and he didn’t. He should because it’s the right thing to do.
Ray Marcano’s column appears on these pages each Sunday.
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