Ohio Supreme Court: Drop box restrictions for voters with disabilities allowed

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that voters with disabilities cannot have their designees deliver their ballots to drop boxes

A divided Ohio Supreme Court ruled that individuals can’t use drop boxes when delivering ballots for voters with disabilities. Instead, they must go inside the county board of elections and fill out a form.

The Ohio Democratic Party and two voters filed a lawsuit challenging Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s directive that required individuals delivering ballots for voters with disabilities to fill out a form at a county board of elections during business hours. This rule prevented them from using drop boxes stationed outside the county boards of elections.

LaRose’s directive came after a federal judge ruled in July that Ohio’s election law violated the rights of people with disabilities by limiting who could drop off their ballots. LaRose said the rules are needed to prevent ballot harvesting, which is when a third party collects and returns multiple ballots.

Democrats argued that LaRose’s rule made it harder for individuals with disabilities to vote by removing the drop box option. But the Ohio Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision, ruled that Democrats waited too long to make their legal argument.

“As a general matter, courts should refrain from ordering changes to the rules governing elections during or close to the start of an election,” according to the majority’s opinion, joined by Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy, Justices Pat Fischer and Pat DeWine and Judge Stephen Powell, of the Twelfth District Court of Appeals.

The majority worried about confusing election officials and voters. “(W)e will not endorse a scenario in which boards of elections send voters incorrect instructions and unavoidably create voter confusion.”

Democratic Justice Jennifer Brunner dissented, writing that LaRose had overreached.

“Good judgment by this court would be to tell the secretary that he has violated his constitutional duties rather than followed them,” wrote Brunner in a decision joined by Judge Pierre Bergeron of the First District Court of Appeals and Judge J. William B. Hoffman of the Fifth District Court of Appeals.

Bergeron, who was filling in, wrote that LaRose’s directive would disenfranchise some of Ohio’s most vulnerable voters. “That is a travesty beyond description,” he wrote. “The directive issued by Secretary LaRose, and the decision by the majority allowing it to persist, sends the message that marginalized citizens may be safely relegated to the sidelines in our democracy.”

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Three justices running for election this year, Democrats Michael Donnelly and Melody Stewart and Republican Joe Deters, recused themselves from reviewing the case.

Read the decision here:

Jessie Balmert covers state government and politics for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.