Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R-Hudson) visited Summit County Sunday to detail plans for a smooth Tuesday election with extra precautions for voters and poll workers worried about the coronavirus.
Since state officials reported the first cases of COVID-19 in Ohio last week, poll workers have backed out by the thousands from their paid Election Day duties, from greeting voters and checking registrations to printing, passing out and collecting ballots thousands of times in 13 hours.
Summit County Board of Elections Member Bryan Williams said about 300 poll workers backed out of the task after undergoing the three-hour training.
LaRose responded to voting-related concerns about the virus, which health officials say is multiple times more dangerous for senior citizens, by moving polling locations out of nursing homes and launching OhioSoS.gov/DefendDemocracy, where 2,569 additional poll workers have signed up since Tuesday, not counting local sign ups.
Summit County has seen a last-minute surge of more than 200 sign-ups, which Williams said will be sufficient to ensure all polling locations are adequately staffed from open (6:30 a.m.) to close (7:30 p.m.) Tuesday. The Summit elections board issued a plea Sunday for more workers.
LaRose spoke Sunday to a class of 40 poll-workers-in-training. He called them “very patriotic” citizens. “I can’t think of many more noble causes than what you all are signing up to be part of,” he said. “And you are inspiration to me.”
In the crowd was LaRose’s brother, Anthony, a University of Akron student with free time since the university and others canceled classes in March to move all learning online. LaRose asked his brother to work the polls.
“I wouldn’t be sending my own brother out if it was not safe,” LaRose told the class.
After his remarks, LaRose and local election staff took a small group of journalists to a warehouse downstairs where a demonstration detailed how the voting booths and utensils for receiving and casting ballots would be regularly sanitized and operated to minimize the possibility of two people touching the same surface.
A line of early voters wrapped around the corner at the early voting center next door. The Rev. Ray Greene Jr. walked the parking lot live-streaming with the perennial “Souls to the Polls” effort that encourages to get African-American voters to come straight from church to vote early.
Two bus loads delivered black voters. But after coordinating Souls to the Polls earlier that day in Youngstown, Greene said he’s seeing “probably the smallest crowd we’ve seen for Souls to the Polls” with churches closing to prevent the spread of the virus.
Greene said the African-American community has a general “distrust of media, so we tend to trust people on social media that we make relationships with. And there’s a lot of bad information out there.”
For that reason as well as Ohio’s already later primary election date, Greene is asking LaRose and Gov. Mike DeWine to postpone the primary, as Georgia and Louisiana, which have yet to begin early voting, have.
“The practicality of that is very difficult,” LaRose said. “Plus, it takes an act of the legislature to change the election date.”
To adjust for turnout concerns due to the coronavirus, boards of elections on Tuesday will accept absentee ballots in person up until the polls close, instead of only ballots postmarked by Monday. Voters or family members can drop them off in-person at the board of elections office on Grant Street.
LaRose also said lessons from the current election might improve future elections, including the general election this fall when health experts say the coronavirus could still be a concern.
LaRose would like to see felons get a chance at becoming poll workers, so long as their crime wasn’t violent or election-related. And he wants to move absentee ballot requests online, eliminating for many a step that requires voters to fill out a piece of paper, fold it up, apply postage and mail it.
“Ask any 20-something you know how many stamps they have in their desks and they’ll look at you funny,” he said.
“I have long been a proponent of the state moving to an online request for absentee ballots,“ LaRose, who also advocates that the state, not the voter, pay for any postage to do it the current way, said.
Reach Beacon Journal reporter Doug Livingston at dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3792.
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LaRose visits local election office to ensure safe, smooth election Tuesday - Akron Beacon Journal
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