Lorain County elections chief: More ballot drop boxes unlikely despite judge's ruling

For a hot minute Tuesday morning, it looked like a lot more absentee ballot drop boxes were going to pop up across Ohio. Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Richard Frye ruled there's no legal reason Secretary of State Frank LaRose should be allowed to limit the number of drop boxes to one per county. Given the complications the COVID-19 pandemic has caused this election season, he called the restriction "arbitrary and unreasonable." Voting rights champions declared success. "No one should have to choose between their health and their right to vote. LaRose has a duty and an obligation to ensure that voters can stay safe and be heard," said All Voting is Local Ohio State Director Kayla Griffin. "Expanding voting options by authorizing more ballot drop boxes is a critical part of any election preparedness plan, reducing the chances of COVID-19 exposure, long lines, confusion and other possible Election Day problems." Trusting that LaRose would fall in line, Frye didn't order an injunction to enforce the ruling. Then the state's director of elections, Amanda Grandjean, sent a message to officials statewide saying the state's one-box-per-county rule is still in effect and LaRose planned to appeal the judge's decision. Paul Adams, director of the Lorain County Board of Elections, said the directive carries the weight of law. He's not allowed to buck it. "This is like deja vu all over again, because every presidential election these lawsuits get us dragged into last-minute changes," Adams said. "Every election there's always some kind of fight that occurs right before." For the record, he said more ballot drop boxes should be available for people who don't feel comfortable voting in person this fall. Drop boxes "logically make sense," Adams said. If the LaRose directive is somehow reversed, the decision to expand drop box access would rest with the Lorain County Board of Elections, which would have to cast a vote in a special meeting. Adams said there would need to be discussion about security for the boxes to prevent tampering as well. There also would need to be thought put into fair distribution of the boxes to make sure they are accessible to the most number of people. For example, it wouldn't be equitable to put all the absentee ballot drop boxes in Lorain and Elyria, or to put 10 in Amherst and none in Sheffield, he said. In any event, a resolution that would result in widespread rollout of drop boxes is unlikely this year, according to Adams, given the ongoing legal fight and rapidly approaching election. "Time is ticking away real fast," he said. Use of absentee ballots, which have been used for decades in Ohio, has become politicized this fall after President Donald Trump decried the use of mail-in ballots. He has repeated that absentee voting leads to fraud, although larger news agencies have reported that he casts an absentee ballot himself. "Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to state wide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it. Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn't work out well for Republicans. @foxandfriends," the president tweeted in April. "MAIL-IN VOTING WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE FRAUD AND ABUSE. IT WILL ALSO LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY. WE CAN NEVER LET THIS TRAGEDY BEFALL OUR NATION. BIG MAIL-IN VICTORY IN TEXAS COURT TODAY. CONGRATS!!!" he tweeted in May. "Mail-In Ballot fraud found in many elections. People are just now seeing how bad, dishonest and slow it is. Election results could be delayed for months. No more big election night answers? 1 percent not even counted in 2016. Ridiculous! Just a formula for RIGGING an Election...." he tweeted in July. On Saturday, he took aim at absentee voting in Pennsylvania in yet another tweet: "Mail-Vote Madness in Pennsylvania -- The swing state is heading toward an election crackup that could draw the entire country into a legal brawl," the president said, citing a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece about potential voting issues." @GovernorTomWolf of Pennsylvania should not be allowed to defraud the PEOPLE of the UNITED STATES!" In a June 8 story published by The Washington Post, the paper conducted an analysis of data collected by three vote-by-mail states — Colorado, Oregon and Washington — with the help of the nonprofit Electronic Registration Information Center. The entities found that officials identified 372 possible cases of double voting or voting on behalf of deceased people out of about 14.6 million votes cast by mail in the 2016 and 2018 general elections — or 0.0025 percent. In those three states, all voters proactively receive ballots in the mail for every election. Contact Jason Hawk at (440) 329-7122 or news@lcnewspapers.com.