Local election officials are continuing to recommend voting by mail as a safe and secure method of voting. The reassurance comes after a poll commissioned by Ideastream Public Media, WKYC and Signal Cleveland found 39% of respondents do not believe mail-in voting is secure.
Voting by mail first became politically charged in 2020 when then-President Donald Trump said voting by mail is an invitation for widespread fraud, according to a report from Pew Research Center. That rhetoric caused a partisan divide in thoughts on voting by mail, which also appears in Ideastream's recent poll - 65.3% of Democratic respondents believe mail-in voting is secure, while only 23.8% of Republican respondents agree.
There’s still time to request an absentee ballot for the Nov. 5 general election.
“We are still encouraging people to vote by mail," Mike West, Community Outreach Manager at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, said, "because that’s a very safe and secure and dependable method of voting.”
After voters mail their ballots or drop them off at the board of elections, the ballots are scanned but not counted, West said. The ballots received early can only be tabulated when polls close on election night – then they’re the first to be added up, he said.
"Since we do that at 7:30, at a consequence, when people look for the results on our website, the first results they will see come from the vote-by-mail ballots," West said.
Despite the rise in popularity of voting by mail in recent years, that trend might not be the case this election cycle, West said.
“The number of vote-by-mail ballot applications is lower than we would have expected," he said.
Voters can track their absentee ballot request and the ballot itself online. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose requested his absentee ballot earlier this month.
“Tedious preparation is the key to executing any successful election," LaRose said in a statement, "and Ohioans can have confidence that no matter which of Ohio’s three convenient methods of voting they choose, their vote will be secure.”
Ohio has three convenient ways to vote: 1) Early, In Person 2) On Election Day or 3) Absentee by Mail.
— Frank LaRose (@FrankLaRose) October 11, 2024
Remember, it is not too late to request your absentee ballot by sending your request form to your local county board of elections. Lauren and I requested ours today!… pic.twitter.com/bqjMB0XDCE
The deadline to request an absentee ballot is Oct. 29.
"You should get your application in as soon as possible that way if there's an issue, we can send you a new application and a letter explaining what the problem is, and you can turn that around," West said.
Ballots must be mailed by Nov. 4 or returned to the board of elections by 7:30 pm on Nov. 5, according to the secretary of state's office.
