A ballot drop box is seen outside the Athens County Board of Elections. (Photo by Tyler Buchanan, Ohio Capital Journal.)
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has asked Statehouse leaders to create a law eliminating ballot drop boxes after a court ruled that people with disabilities should have more opportunities to vote. Using his own powers, he put more steps in place for voters to use drop boxes ahead of the November election.
Nearly four million Ohioans voted last November, with 1 in 4 people voting absentee, according to state data.
State Sen. Bill DeMora, D-Columbus, worries that LaRose’s new proposals will make that much more difficult to do.
“Working people work — they go home and they vote and they drive it to the board of elections knowing that the law already says it has to be a secure location, it has to be monitored,” DeMora said.
LaRose issued a directive Friday that requires someone delivering an absentee ballot for another person to sign an attestation that they are complying with state law — which means they must go into the board of elections to sign the form.
“As a practical matter, this means that only a voter’s personal ballot may be returned via drop box,” LaRose ordered.
The secretary also sent a letter to legislative leaders asking them to either drastically cut down who can submit an absentee ballot to a drop box or eliminate the use of drop boxes entirely.
DeMora called it ridiculous.
“It hurts working people and working families and college students — the people, of course, who don’t vote for Republicans,” DeMora said. “They make it tougher for people to vote, make it tougher for people to take their own spouse’s ballot to the one box in the county that they’re allowed to have to drop off their ballots, anything they can do to make it tougher to vote.”
In his letter, LaRose explained his worry is about ballot harvesting — someone collecting a bunch of other people’s ballots and submitting them. But right now, there is a defined list of who can submit absentee ballots.
In 2023, Ohio House Bill 458 changed state law so the only people allowed to deliver a sealed absentee ballot besides the voter are members of the postal service or specific relatives. This includes a spouse, a parent, grandparent, child, sibling, aunt or uncle, niece or nephew. It excludes caregivers, employees of a care facility, grandchildren, cousins, neighbors, friends and anyone else unrelated.
If anyone not listed returns the ballot, that would be a fourth-degree felony. If a voter receives a felony conviction for helping their loved one, they would no longer be able to vote themselves.
Case Western Reserve University elections law professor Atiba Ellis explained that this letter stems from a case LaRose lost in federal court earlier this summer.
“These proposals have come in the wake of the recent lawsuit that has required the state of Ohio to offer more opportunities for persons with disabilities to get assistance when voting,” Ellis said.
Jen Miller with the League of Women Voters of Ohio (LWV) filed a lawsuit along with the ACLU, saying Ohio is violating the federal Americans with Disabilities Act and the Voting Rights Act.
A U.S. district court sided with Miller, striking down that specific provision of the law.
LaRose, in his letter, claimed that the LWV wanted to “make Ohio’s elections less secure and more vulnerable to cheating, especially as it relates to the use of drop boxes.”
“This effectively creates an unintended loophole in Ohio’s ballot harvesting law that we must address,” he alleged. “The security of the delivery of absentee ballots remains paramount, so this leaves us with the obvious question of a remedy.”
We reached out to LaRose’s office to ask exactly what loophole LWV created but did not hear back.
The ruling just struck down the one provision that dealt with people with disabilities and who can deliver their absentee ballot for just them.
To be clear, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud. However, Republican leaders across the country have cast doubt on mail-in or drop-boxed ballots.
“The desire to eliminate drop boxes, narrow the ways that one can vote — to what almost seems like simply in-person on Election Day — is driven by the belief that the other methods are somehow automatically fraudulent,” Ellis explained.
There have rarely been any significant examples of voter fraud via drop box, the nonpartisan professor expert said.
“All too often, the evidence of fraud is evidence of partisans, and most notably Republican partisans, in other states who have tried to manipulate absentee ballots,” he continued.
DeMora said LaRose is trying to stay relevant after losing his primary for U.S. Senate earlier this year.
“This is another solution, another MAGA solution to a problem that doesn’t exist here,” DeMora said, insulting LaRose at length — even asking for the secretary to run against him in 2026 for state Senate to see what happens. “It’s time for him to just to go away and leave the people of Ohio alone because we have fair elections as it is and he’s just trying to ruin it.”
This is another way LaRose is trying to prevent the November redistricting amendment from passing, DeMora added.
LaRose has argued that he is not trying to disenfranchise voters, but rather protect against fraud that could happen.
He also proposed two other ideas in his letter. He asked for lawmakers to adopt a proof-of-citizenship requirement for voter registration and for changes on the ability to cast a provisional ballot.
We reached out to both House Speaker Jason Stephens, R-Kitts Hill, and Senate President Matt Huffman, R-Lima, for comment about the proposal they received from LaRose.
“It’s an important issue we need to consider to ensure our elections are secure,” Stephens said.
Huffman’s spokesperson John Fortney also said the Senate would consider it.
“Protecting the integrity of Ohio’s elections remains a priority as we witness the impact of the Biden administration’s dangerous failure to secure the border. Secretary LaRose has led the effort to protect Ohio’s election system by working with the General Assembly to pass common sense voter ID laws, including photo ID. We look forward to continuing the discussion to protect our state and local elections from a growing danger,” Fortney said.
But not all Ohio Republicans agreed with LaRose’s unsubstantiated claims of incoming ballot harvesting. When asked, Gov. Mike DeWine physically scoffed at LaRose’s ideas.
“Look, I have said consistently that I think we do a very good job in Ohio running elections,” DeWine said. “I think anyone who wants to change what we do has a burden of proof of showing that there’s a problem with what we do now.”
Ohio lawmakers aren’t expected back until after the November election, so drop boxes can still be used for now — but with more steps.
Follow WEWS statehouse reporter Morgan Trau on X and Facebook.
‘This article was originally published on News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content-sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ articles, it is not available for free republication by other news outlets as it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland.
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