all counties in Ohio mailed registered voters absentee ballot applications<\/a>.\u00a0 (A side benefit would be to make it easy to vote by mail.)\u00a0 All told, 6.9 million of the state\u2019s 7.8 million registered voters were mailed an absentee ballot application.<\/p>\nAs expected, many took advantage of that opportunity \u2013 roughly 1.3 million as of about a week ago.\u00a0\u00a0 And as of about a week ago, roughly 950,000 absentee ballots had been returned.<\/p>\n
No one knows just how many absentee ballots ultimately will be requested in Ohio, or how many of those absentee ballots will be unused. In Ohio, this year absentee ballots may be requested up until November 3; they must be postmarked NLT November 5.<\/p>\n
Also obviously, a number of those who requested absentee ballots will change their mind and decide to vote in person instead.\u00a0 Based on how many were outstanding a week ago, we\u2019re talking potentially 350,000 or more people who could change their mind.<\/p>\n
Now the law of unintended consequences comes into play.<\/p>\n
In Ohio, if you (1) requested an absentee ballot, and (2) then show up to vote in person, you don\u2019t get to just waltz into the voting booth and vote normally.\u00a0 Instead, you must cast a paper provisional ballot.\u00a0 Those provisional ballots are counted only after the voter’s eligibility to cast that vote has been verified.<\/p>\n
In the case of those who requested absentee ballots but did not vote absentee, that means after verifying that no absentee ballot bearing their name was cast.\u00a0 The intent is obvious:\u00a0 to prevent people from abusing the system by voting twice.<\/p>\n
So that means each unused Ohio absentee ballot can potentially generate a provisional ballot.\u00a0 That\u2019s potentially 350,000+ paper provisional ballots.<\/p>\n
Now, here are the unintended consequence.\u00a0 Ohio law specifies that provisional ballots cannot be opened until 10 days after the election<\/em>.<\/p>\nSo . . . that means in Ohio there could possibly be 350,000 or more paper, sealed provisional ballots.\u00a0 Ballots which by Ohio law cannot by even be opened<\/em> until 16 November.\u00a0 Ballots which must be securely stored for those 10 days.\u00a0 And they\u2019re paper ballots which then must be counted \u2013 presumably by hand, with all the potential for honest mistakes, partisan arguments, and outright fraud inherent in counting a bunch of paper ballots.<\/p>\nAnd remember:\u00a0 this is happening in a state that could well determine the outcome of the 2012 Presidential election.\u00a0 So it could well be 2+ weeks after Election Day before anyone knows who won.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cHey, ho, way to go Ohio . . . .\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If so, maybe you should take a close look at Ohio this year.\u00a0 It could prove … So, You Think Letting Everyone Vote By Mail Is a Great Idea?<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2012-election","category-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32668\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}