A bill to require all absentee ballots arrive at boards of elections by election day—eliminating the four day grace period in current law--is headed to Gov. Mike DeWine. But while he signs most bills that come to him, he's suggested it’s not certain that he’ll sign this one.
Republican backers have said Senate Bill 293 is needed because ballots need to be at boards of elections on election night to have an unofficial count as soon as possible. And they've noted that Attorney General Dave Yost received a letter from the Department of Justice in September, warning that Ohio could face a federal lawsuit following an executive order Trump issued in March stating that there is "a uniform and nondiscriminatory ballot receipt deadline of Election Day for all methods of voting", with ballots from military and overseas voters exempted.
But Democrats said eliminating the four-day grace period doesn’t do anything to stop voter fraud, which is already extremely rare. And they've said thousands of ballots would have been thrown out last year if this bill would have been law then. Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose did confirm that, telling a House committee that around 8,000 ballots were received after election day in November 2024, but he noted that was 0.012% of the total number of ballots cast.
Before the bill passed, DeWine re-iterated something he said a year ago—that he’s not convinced more changes to Ohio’s voting laws are needed.
"As I've said in the past, I think our laws in Ohio, our present laws are good. I don't really see a great need to change those those laws. So I'll look at this one," DeWine told reporters last month. "That's my general feeling about this. We run good elections in the state of Ohio. We give people ample opportunity to vote. We do things right. We run a great system. I just don't know that there's a great need to be changing."
Military and overseas voters are exempt from the bill’s requirement that all mailed in ballots must be received by election day. And those who vote by provisional ballot still have four days to prove their identities so their ballots are counted. So while an unofficial count is reported soon after all ballots are counted, the official count is usually a few weeks after election day.
Voting rights advocates have urged DeWine to veto the bill, saying it creates barriers for voters who mail their ballots because they can't get to their board of elections to return them, only to risk being disenfranchised by delays in the U.S. Postal Service. The Ohio Voter Rights Coalition also said it would be "piling new unfunded mandates on our already strained Boards of Elections—all under the false pretense of security."
DeWine has 10 days, not including Sundays, to decide on the bill—which as of Sunday his office said he hasn’t officially received.
DeWine has signed more than 330 bills and has vetoed seven, not including 150 line item vetoes in budgets and line-item vetoes in four other bills.
