1/22/14 Early voting hours set for May primary

  • By Nick Sabo
  • January 22, 2014
  • 431
                        
SUMMARY: Hours are fewer than those in 2012 Presidential election, but should result in savings for Holmes County Board of Elections Shorter early voting hours for the May 6 primary election should result in savings for the Holmes County Board of Elections’s budget. Under a schedule set by Ohio Secretary of State John Husted, early voting for the 2014 primary election will be more in line with regular business hours, than the late evening hours, set during the 2012 Presidential election. Early voting hours in the 2012 Presidential elections had county boards of elections open some evenings until 7 p.m. and putting in a full day on a Saturday. Under the schedule, proposed by the Ohio Association of Election Officials (OAEO), early voting hours for weekdays will be from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. On April 7, the last day to register to vote in the primary election, county boards of election will be required to stay open until 9 p.m. Hours on the Saturday before the election will be 8 a.m. to noon. Absentee voting will end on the Saturday before the election. In the 2012 Presidential election, absentee voting ended on Monday. Early voting will start April 1. For the Holmes County Board of Elections, the change in hours is welcome, deputy clerk Mary Shaffer said. “(Husted) took what our association recommended, so we’re good with it,” Shaffer said. Shaffer said ending early voting on Saturday, rather than the day before the election, will also help the BOE run things more smoothly. “The one other thing we wanted to be certain of was no absentee voting on Monday,” Shaffer said. “We really run three elections: A mail out election, in house (early voting) and election day.” During the 2012 Presidential election, the Holmes County BOE was open for an additional 72 hours, Holmes County BOE director Lisa Welch said. Welch said her budget was unprepared for the additional expense, and creative ways to make up for the extra hours had to be found. Welch said she and Shaffer used up vacation and comp time to keep the budget in the black. “Once the directive came through, we were like, let’s see, how are we going to pay for this?” Welsh said. “We were paying for the election well into 2013.” The Nov. 5, 2013 election cost approximately $15,000, Welch said. Welch said the 2012 Presidential election was much more than that, but could not give an exact number. Early voting was a political hot-button issue in the Presidential election. Husted was criticized by Washington lawmakers in the 2012 election for trying to reduce early voting hours in an unsuccessful lawsuit. Husted, speaking Jan. 15 at the OEAO winter conference in Columbus, said the new voting hours are the result of a bi-partisan effort formed in the spirit of cooperative government. “Yes. This schedule for voting is your (the OAEO’s) idea,” Husted said. Early voting has proven to be popular with county residents. In the Presidential election, 3,931 votes were cast through early voting or absentee ballots, about a quarter of the total votes. In the 2013 November general election, 870 votes were early or absentee, out of a total of 5,394 votes.


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