The state鈥檚 Republican chief elections officer and Ohio Democrats continue to battle over installing additional drop boxes where absentee voters could deposit their ballots if they鈥檙e concerned about the security and speed of mailing them in this fall.
There鈥檚 a ballot drop box at each of Ohio鈥檚 88 county boards of elections.
In an interview for this week, Secretary of State Frank LaRose said it could be a challenge to add more in secure locations with 24-hour surveillance with just three months till the election.
鈥淚f it's legal to add extra drop boxes, then I'm certainly open to that idea," LaRose said. "It's a question that because the Ohio revised code is definitely not clear as to the question of whether counties can add additional drop boxes."
And LaRose said he鈥檚 not sure how counties would get the word out about where those boxes would be located.
LaRose said he's also concerned about how the ballots in those boxes would be handled: 鈥淎lmost everything about elections ends up becoming a subject of litigation, and the last thing we need weeks before the election is to have a dozen different county board of elections having to go to court over whether they can continue counting ballots that are deposited in their drop boxes.鈥�
saying there鈥檚 nothing in the law to prevent boards of elections from adding those boxes, which they say could give absentee voters another option besides relying on the US mail.
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