Few turning out to vote early in Athens County
After months of legal challenges to changes in Ohio’s voting rules, Ohioans have had the chance to cast their ballots early since Oct. 7.
In that time, about 200 Athens County residents have voted early in person.
According to Debbie Quivey, the director of the Athens County Board of Elections, there have been 3,096 absentee ballots cast through Thursday morning. Most of these ballots have been sent out in the mail — only 196 ballots had been cast in person.
On the first day of early voting, which started the day after registration closed, the Board of Elections mailed out almost 2,500 ballots to people who had requested to vote by mail. About 30 early ballots were cast at the board’s South Court Street office that day.
In last year’s November general election, only 62 voters of the 7,876 registered to vote in precincts on campus actually cast their ballots.
Voters face different rules regarding early voting in the upcoming elections due to legislation signed earlier this year.
The legislation eliminated an early voting period when voters could register and cast an absentee ballot on the same day, commonly known as “Golden Week.”
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted also established statewide early voting hours in the four weeks leading up to Election Day — the first of its kind for the state. Democrats criticized the new schedule, saying it prevents access to the polls for many in the state’s most urban neighborhoods.
The controversial alterations spurred a battle that started at the Ohio Statehouse and eventually made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where justices upheld the new state law.
“It will continue to be a source of debate and contention, I think, across the country,” Rep. Debbie Phillips, D-Albany, said.
Measures to expand early voting in Ohio became a big topic of conversation after the 2004 election, when voters in the state faced inordinately long wait times on Election Day.
But Phillips argued that Republicans stripped those measures from the books.
She said that she and other state Democrats will continue to challenge what she called efforts pushed by the Republican majority to make it harder for people to vote.
“The Republicans started raising a lot of questions about whether it would create voter fraud,” Phillips said. “We haven’t really seen any evidence of that here in the state of Ohio.”
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