Some of Ohio’s absentee ballot requests may have been rejected because of a change-of-address glitch, leaving local election boards scrambling to make sure those voters can still cast a ballot in the Nov. 6 election.
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted this week sent 33,000 updated registration records to elections officials, reports the
Cleveland Plain Dealer, although the deadline to register or change addresses ended three weeks ago.
The boards then had to immediately process the new current address information and send out a new round of absentee ballots to affected voters.
The delay in providing current address information is being blamed on data-sharing problems between the secretary of state's office and the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Husted started working last year to coordinate the change-of-address system with voter registrations. However, many of the records weren’t transferred until late last week.
Husted called the timing of glitch “unfortunate,” but Ohio Senate Democratic Leader Eric Kearney criticized the Republican state official for not admitting the problem more publicly.
Voters who get the new absentee ballot can still return it by mail as long as it is postmarked by the day before the election, or they can return them to their board of elections by 7:30 p.m. on Election Day. Also, they can visit their local board to vote early.
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