Printer says ballots in mail

Company experiences ‘unparalleled volume’ in 2020

Lorain County ballots are going out in the mail — and some voters already have returned them.

On Oct. 20, Cleveland-based printer Midwest Direct announced the company completed printing and delivering all vote-by-mail ballots to the U.S. Postal Service.

The company announced it processed and delivered 1 million vote-by-mail ballots and more than 1.4 million Election Day ballots for counties in two states over the last 14 days.

Midwest Direct received regional and national attention in recent days due to delays finishing ballots to mail to voters.

The company said “unparalleled volume” for ballots caused the delay.

“We are proud of our team’s efforts in processing this unprecedented number of ballots in the short time we had to complete them, and we thank them for their diligent efforts,” said Richard T. Gebbie, CEO of Midwest Direct. “We brought in extra staff, expanded hours and added equipment to meet the staggering volume of mail-in ballot requests for this election.

“In many cases, we processed three times the volume of requests the county board of elections anticipated.”

Midwest

Direct was the printer for Lorain County’s ballots and the backlog of 30,000 ballots were mailed out Oct. 16, said Paul Adams, director of the Lorain County Board of Elections.

That day, Adams and Deputy Director James Kramer, along with other staff, went to Midwest Direct to ensure the work was completed.

Early voting began Oct. 6 in Ohio and the Lorain County staff expected ballots would go out to the mail starting that day.

Because the ballots, with accompanying envelopes and instructions, are sorted before arriving at the post office, postal workers do not have to sort them, so ballots already were arriving in the mail on Oct. 17, Adams said.

“A number of people got their ballots on Saturday (Oct. 17),” he said. “I personally got mine on Saturday, so I know some of the ballots got out through the mail on Saturday.”

More hit the mail Oct. 19, Adams said, and voters already were responding.

“One of the ways I know that that’s the case, is that at the (Lorain) Board of Elections, we have a large number of people using our ballot drop off drive-thru,” Adams said.

As of noon Oct. 20, 17,052 mail ballots were returned to the board.

“I expect this number to sharply increase over the next few days,” Adams said.

During the week, the drop off drive-thru is available during the open hours of the Board of Elections.

The board offices is open until 6 p.m. this week and until 7 p.m. next week, Adams said.

On weekends, the drivethru is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Midwest Direct’s printing delays — and flying a flag in support of President Trump — landed the company in a New York Times report last week.

Gebbie bristled at the suggestion that the printer was playing favorites among candidates or issues.

“For the 10 years we’ve been producing ballots, Midwest has never held or prioritized ballot printing for any reason,” Gebbie said. “This year, we processed every ballot without regard to party, geography or county, as we always do. Any suggestion that our personal political beliefs prompted us to slow down ballot production and distribution is absolutely false.

“Quite simply, we wouldn’t be in business if we conducted business that way. We know how important this election is to everyone in our country, and we have kept our pledge to do everything our company can to make sure the mailin ballot process proceeds expediently and with integrity.”

Gebbie