Ohio Election Bill

The Columbus Dispatch reports here on a pending Ohio election bill, which includes some but not all of the changes requested by Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. The bill approved by a state senate committee reportedly would require bipartisan teams to transport ballots and memory cards, and would allow absentee ballots to be counted if received within 11 days of the election. Perhaps most significantly, the bill would limit the Secretary of State’s power to issue directives, requiring public review before permanent orders and allowing only temporary directives 90 days before and 40 days after an election.
Recall that a series of directives issued by Ohio’s former Secretary of State Ken Blackwell shortly before the November 2004 were at the heart of controversies that wound up in litigation, as I’ve detailed in Part II of this article. The bill doesn’t include Brunner’s proposal to allow counties to use central-count optical scan system, as the state’s largest county (Cuyahoga) now wants to do.

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