The state’s fix for a broken absentee voting system may have little impact in Summit County as local officials smooth out the details for the highly anticipated presidential primary and general elections this year.
After conferring with U.S. Postal Service officials, Secretary of State Jon Husted issued guidelines Friday to avoid the hundreds of absentee ballots that are tossed out each election because they show up late with no postmark to prove they were mailed on time.
To avoid the issue altogether, Summit elections officials have said voters can hand-deliver absentee ballots to the board of elections office at 470 Grant St. or deliberately request a postmark at a post office.
The postmark, which covers and nullifies stamps, has been the key in prior elections. Without a postmark, Husted has read state law to mean that the late ballots must be discounted.
On Friday, Husted changed his position, now permitting the usage of other markings applied by postal workers. But the state elections chief wasn’t as definitive on another fix: switching to letter-sized envelopes, which he said are more likely to get a postmark or a fluorescent bar code that, if scanned, tells when the mail was sorted.
The move to smaller envelopes, though recommended, isn’t mandated in either the upcoming presidential primary in March, when several tax and school issues also will be decided, or the general election in November, when America picks a new president.
Cuyahoga County already uses letter-sized envelopes, which may lack postmarks but rarely bar codes. With Husted’s blessing, the county is now poised to cut the number of arbitrarily discounted late ballots by as much as 90 percent. “It represents a major win not only for voters in Cuyahoga County, where absentee voting is very popular each election, but for all Ohio voters. It’s going to ensure that ballots that should count, will count,” said Pat McDonald, the Republican chair of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.
Summit County, however, will again use large, flat envelopes; though 861 did not get postmarks, despite more than half carrying a stamp, when sorted by the post office in the last general election in November.
Joe Masich, director of the Summit County Board of Elections, said there “is too short of a window” to switch to letter-sized envelopes before workers begin sending out absentee ballots on Feb. 17 to voters who have requested them.
Upon their return to the board of elections to be counted, “if our envelopes have the bar code and if they’re timely, they’ll be counted,” Masich said. But Masich knows that’s a long shot. None of the 861 ballots lacking postmarks in November had a bar code instead.
And even with Husted’s new rules, Masich said USPS labels — now accepted as a postmark — appeared on only 271 of the automatically discounted ballots. They could have been checked for timely mailing. The remaining 590 would have been tossed, with or without the new rules.
Trumped up ballots
One technical issue aside, Summit County elections officials addressed a couple of housekeeping items: how much the upcoming presidential primary will cost and how many ballots to order.
There’s the potential for an influx of voters who normally snub low-turnout primaries but may mobilize behind antiestablishment candidates Donald Trump and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
After reviewing the 2008 and 2012 presidential primary races, the Summit County Board of Elections is planning for as many as half of the county’s registered Democrats and Republicans to turn out.
The total cost of the primary is projected to be $607,000 — the state pitching in $256,000 and local precincts paying $351,000.
Masich said absentee ballots alone could account for up to 30,000 votes, though he suspects recent headlines about ballots being mishandled by postal workers could dissuade mail-in voting. Upward of 90,000 absentee ballots could be mailed in for the November election, when the board is expected to use the smaller letter size envelopes.
In both elections, officials agreed all eyes will be on Ohio.
The March 15 primaries in Ohio, Illinois (each winner-take-all contests) and Florida will account for 10 percent of all Republican delegates, who gather in Cleveland this summer to pick the party’s nominee.
Before Ohio, “only 31 percent of delegates will be decided by March 15,” said Paula Sauter, the board’s Democratic deputy director.
“Ohio’s relevance will be at peak level,” board Chair Bryan Williams concluded.
Doug Livingston can be reached at 330-996-3792 or dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow on Twitter: @DougLivingstonABJ.