COLUMBUS — The U.S. Postal Service is making several changes to ensure faster delivery of vote-by-mail ballots to residents as the Ohio Primary date approaches, Secretary of State Frank LaRose said Friday.
Postal Service Deputy Postmaster General Ronald Stroman and COO David Williams agreed to make “significant improvements in mail delivery” after LaRose met with them about what could be done to resolve issues voters and elections officials had brought to his attention.
The meeting resulted from a letter LaRose sent to Ohio Congressional delegation about delays in mail delivery that were affecting how quickly Ohioans were receiving their ballots, LaRose’s office said Friday.
Voters must get their ballots in the mail by Monday, April 27, or drop them off in the secure drop box at their county board of elections by 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 28. There will be limited in-person voting only available to disabled and homeless voters at the county board of elections facility on Tuesday.
For all other voters, this is a vote-by-mail election only, LaRose has said.
Tuesday, he announced that 1,667,883 Ohioans had requested a vote-by-mail ballot for the primary and 975,158 voters have already cast their ballot through Friday, April 17. Data was collected by LaRose’s office via a survey of Ohio’s 88 county boards of elections.
According to LaRose, the postal service will:
- Institute “all clear” processes to ensure all election mail is processed each day.
- Set up hand-to-hand delivery for election mail as it makes its way through processing on Saturday, from the board of elections to the distribution center.
- Will have staff recheck collection bins each day to ensure late arriving ballots are retrieved.
- Have Postal facilities track election mail deliveries to Ohio’s boards of elections starting on Monday, April 27, and continuing through May 8.
- No longer route election mail through the Detroit Regional Distribution Center, to avoid further delivery delays in northwest Ohio. Instead it will be kept in-state. Additionally, an Ohio manager will be assigned to Detroit to ensure any mail mistakenly sent there is handled appropriately.
- Assign its independent investigative unit to do additional “all clear” checks at Ohio facilities.
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