Ohio expands in-person early voting hours a week ahead of Aug. 8 special election

CLEVELAND — With a week to go before the Aug. 8 special election in Ohio, early voting hours have expanded at the state’s 88 county boards of election.

Hours this week through Friday are from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., except for Tuesday, when the doors will stay open until 8:30 p.m. There will also be hours this weekend on Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on Sunday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Remember there will be no early voting hours on Monday, Aug. 7, one of the changes enacted by the legislature earlier this year, along with the deadline to apply for a vote by mail ballot which is Tuesday, Aug. 1; applications must be received at your local Board of Elections by 8:30 p.m.

Turnout for August elections is always challenging to predict. Vacations can physically take some voters away, while summer, in general, can mentally distract others.

“Just get it out of the way to make sure I don’t forget,” said Darlene White of Cleveland Heights, who came out on Monday to cast her ballot. “I’ll be in town, but I just wanted to make sure that it wasn’t an oversight.”

She’s not alone. Issue 1, the question of whether to make it harder to amend the state constitution, is generating something August elections don’t typically do: interest. Heading into the final week of in-person early voting, 10,253 had voted early in Cuyahoga County. That’s already roughly three times the 3,094 who voted early in the special election in August of last year, and that’s with a week still to go.

The number of early votes and absentee ballot requests (86,949) is almost equal to all of the votes cast in the county last August (92,042), including Election Day.

“These August elections can be pretty unpredictable,” said Congresswoman Shontel Brown, who rallied Monday with area Faith Leaders to urge voters to reject Issue 1. Brown, of course, won a bitter Democratic primary in another special August election in 2021. She says the key is to identify your voters and lock them in early.

“These are the types of elections that slide under people’s radar, that they might tend to forget about, you think, ‘oh I’m going on vacation,’ next thing you know Election Day has come and gone, so we really want to push the early vote,” Brown said.

In Cuyahoga County, roughly one out of four Democrats (24.5%) has already requested a vote by mail ballot compared to 19% of Republicans. But while Republicans have shied away from early voting in recent years, Republican leaders who are urging a yes vote on Issue 1 say they shouldn’t.

“You know this myth of voter suppression is exactly that it’s a myth,” said Ohio GOP Chair Alex Triantafilou. “You have an entire month to cast your ballot; we want Republicans to lock in their votes early. We think it makes sense for all Ohioans to get their ballot, educate themselves and then cast a vote early.”