State requires changes, causes delay in printing

The Lawrence County Board of Elections began mailing absentee ballots on Friday to voters who filed an application with the board.

“The style and size of the envelopes changed this year,” Catherine Overbeck, director of the board of elections, said. “Voters need to be looking for a smaller white envelope, not the large manila colored envelope we have previously used.”

The state mandated change of envelopes has caused concern and backlog among many counties throughout Ohio.

“The Secretary of State first required us to change to a different mail return envelope, so that the post office could use postal machines to postmark the envelopes, instead of hand cancelling them,” Overbeck said. “The postmark is extremely important in determining whether an absentee ballot is properly cast.”

Under Ohio law, if the board receives the ballot within 10 days after the close of polls, the ballot will be counted in the final official canvass only if the envelope is postmarked by the post office, and that postmark is dated Nov. 7 at the very latest, the day before the election.

The envelopes require special printing and camera work to identify it as elections mail from the board of elections, and like the majority of counties in Ohio, the Lawrence County board uses Dayton-area based election materials provider Barrett Brothers Legal Publishing to print the materials.

“After design, the state then advised us to wait to obtain the envelopes, as there was a lawsuit pending concerning the absentee identification envelopes,” Overbeck said.

The identification envelope is used by voters to identify themselves as the correct voter, and is sealed by the voter after they place their voted ballot inside. That entire package is then placed in the return envelope and mailed back to the board.

“After receiving no further directive from the state, I placed an order at the direction of our local board, who determined that we could not continue to wait on a decision from the state,” Overbeck said. “Unfortunately, so did every other county in Ohio.”  As a result, Barrett Brothers was inundated with orders, and had some orders, including Lawrence County’s, printed out of state.

“Barrett told us when we ordered they would fill it as quickly as possible. Then they promised us we would have them by Oct. 17,” Overbeck said. “On Oct. 18, after repeated attempts to contact them, they notified us about the out of state printing, and told us they would try to get them to us by the 20th.

Overbeck said some materials were delivered this past Thursday and that staff would work over the weekend to have ballots mailed this past Monday.