Ohio’s election system is not a broken one
It’s the logic of the state’s lawmakers that needs a fix
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.
But there is a reason, and we fear that it is as sinister it seems.
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.
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.