Ohio is halfway through early voting, and the Secretary of State’s office says it’s picking up with two weeks to go till Election Day.
More than 1 million Ohio voters have asked for absentee ballots, and more than 332,000 have been mailed back or cast in person. That’s a 30 percent increase over this point in the last midterm election in 2014, which many describe as an outlier because of a weak race for governor. And it’s far short of early ballot requests in 2016 – which by this point topped 1.3 million. But turnout is always higher in presidential years than in midterms, even when races for governor and US Senator are on the ballot. There are more than 8 million registered voters in Ohio – the highest number since 2008. But it’s worth noting that no one has been taken off the voter rolls since litigation over the process to remove inactive voters was filed in 2016.
