COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Republican state lawmakers on Monday rejected Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s request to pay for return postage on absentee ballots for the upcoming presidential election.
The Ohio Controlling Board, a panel of state legislators that approves spending requests from state government agencies, voted 4-2 on Monday to reject paying for the postage, with the board’s four Republican members voting ‘no’ and two Democrats voting ‘yes.’ Republicans questioned whether state law allowed LaRose to provide postage-paid envelopes, and also raised concerns about changing voting procedures weeks before the election.
LaRose, a Republican, last month requested permission to spend $3 million to provide pre-paid postage with all absentee ballots. Lawmakers requested extra time to consider the matter before voting to reject it on Monday. LaRose previously tried and failed to get the legislature to pay for the postage, so he decided to try to do it out of his previously approved budget.
For eight years, Ohio has mailed absentee ballot applications to all registered voters, but provided the return postage for the actual ballots for the first time this past primary, which was converted to an all-mail format amid the coronavirus pandemic.
LaRose said providing return postage would be a convenience that would help ballots get returned more quickly. Elections officials expect the coronavirus pandemic will lead to a much higher than normal rate of mail voting. Early returns of absentee ballot applications support that prediction, and already are approaching 2016 totals with nearly two months to go until the election.
“A ‘no’ vote today is a ‘no’ vote that’s over the objections over our Ohio elections officers in a bipartisan way, and of myself, Ohio’s chief elections officer," LaRose said during Monday’s meeting.
He added: “I think there’s a tendency that this benefits a particular political party. That’s just not the case. That’s borne out state after state… What it does do is get them back to us sooner, and that’s what our objective is here today.”
But State Rep. Scott Oelslager, a Canton Republican, pointed out Ohio has ample early-voting opportunities.
“I’m highly reluctant to change the rules of any election, let alone a presidential election, at the eleventh hour," he said.
State Sen. Vernon Sykes, an Akron Democrat, said approving postage would help the election go more smoothly.
“This is an unusual time that requires some unusual provisions by us. We elected leaders are the servants of the people,” he said. “I believe this will be helpful in the election process to get those ballots back as early as possible.”
State Sen. Matt Dolan, a Chagrin Falls Republican, is a statutory member of the Controlling Board, due to his role as the chairman of the Senate finance committee. He issued a statement Monday saying he supported providing pre-paid postage, but said Senate President Larry Obhof had named someone else to permanently take his seat.
Dolan’s replacement, Republican Newark Sen. Jay Hottinger, was absent Monday, and was himself replaced by Sen. Bill Coley, a Butler County Republican who voted ‘no.’
Dolan said he would have voted ‘yes’ had he been on the board.
“At the end of the day, I don’t think this is going to help or hurt either party," he said. "But in this timeframe, in this pandemic, if we could have made it one step easier, I am for that.”