Election system in Ohio doesn’t need to be fixed

As the well-worn but worthy saying goes, if it isn’t broken, don’t try to fix it.

A new bill backed by a bevy of House Republicans could do more than break a portion of Ohio’s election law that thousands of voters – including people who voted for them – embraced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The bill would take a sledgehammer to voting access by banning the of return of ballots via drop boxes and stripping away the right to vote by mail without an excuse.

The way we vote in Ohio is nothing new, although more people used absentee options in 2020.

Ohio’s early-voting law was approved in 2005, and people have been voting by mail for decades.

Franklin County became one of the first in the state to install drop boxes in 2008.

There is no good reason for House Bill 387, recently introduced by Rep. Bill Dean, R-Xenia.

The bill would make it harder for the ‘wrong’ people to vote, even though it’s not entirely clear who all votes with absentee ballots and who does not.

House Bill 387 would block voting options embraced by voters during the pandemic.

Ohioans cast more than 3.5 million ballots before Election Day in November, according to information from Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office.

The number of people who voted absentee jumped from 33.5% in 2016 to 58.6% during the pandemic.

An astounding 94% of absentee ballots requested were returned.

Nationally, those who voted for now President Joe Biden were twice as likely to say they voted by mail than those who voted for former President Donald Trump, according to the Pew Research Center.

Black voters were less likely to mail in ballots or vote absentee than white, Hispanic, and Asian American voters.

Combined, nearly 8 million votes were cast in Ohio in the 2020 primary and general elections, but only 13 people face possible prosecution for voting illegally because they aren’t U.S. citizens.

The desire to limit access to voting has nothing to do with the fairytale fraud Rep. Tom Brinkman, R-Mount Lookout, said “potentially is happening in the system.”

LaRose, a Republican, and the vast majority of county level election officials, provide plenty of evidence that fraud is exceedingly rare in Ohio.

Dean’s bill is far more restrictive than another controversial one proposed by Reps. Bill Seitz and Sharon Ray.

House Bill 294 would cut the availability of drop boxes to 10 days before Election Day, end in-person voting on the Monday before Election Day and require two forms of identification to request a mail-in ballot online.

It’s also unnecessary. The voting system in Ohio works, and it works well.

Yet there are even more restrictions in Dean’s House Bill 387 than we’ve mentioned so far. It says that those who would be out of the county for the entire voting period, incarcerated or with physical disabilities or illness would be the only ones eligible to vote by mail.

It would limit precinct officials to a seven-hour workday and over time, limit early voting to six days.

Dean’s bill also would cut the Monday before the election as an Early Voting Day and limit the acceptable forms of identification to a driver’s license, state identification card or passport.

Military IDs, current bills or paychecks could not be used for identity confirmation as they are now.

Ohio’s bipartisan-run election system runs smoothly and is the envy of many states.

In fact, LaRose just won the Innovators Award from the National Association of State Elections Directors for Ohio’s Precinct Election Official Recruitment Program during the 2020 election.

Lawmakers here and nationally should seek to make it easier for eligible voters to exercise their right instead of offering illogical legislation that calls into question the legitimacy of their own elections.

After all, if there’s rampant fraud in the system (as they falsely suggest), how could we possibly believe that they are legitimate officeholders?

Ohio lawmakers need to reject the national trend of Republicans seeking more restrictive and complicated voting laws in the wake of Trump’s clear defeat in the presidential election.

There was no steal. There was virtually no fraud.

And while Trump lost the election, he actually won Ohio decisively: 3,154,834 votes to Joe Biden’s 2,679,165 votes. The system works.

The ability to drop off ballots and vote by mail adds convenience to the process. During the pandemic, it also aided public safety.

Ohio lawmakers must reject additional layers of confusion and complication that would suppress votes and disenfranchise Ohio voters.

Ohio’s election system is not broken, but some lawmakers’ logic needs a fix.