By M.L. Schultze

Roughly 6 in 10 of the people who voted in Cuyahoga County Tuesday did so by mail or by showing up before election day at the Board of Elections. It’s the first county-wide election in which the majority of voters in Cuyahoga cast their ballots other than on election day, and it’s part of a trend playing out ever since Ohio loosened absentee voting rules.

Ohio State University law professor and elections expert Daniel Tokaji says that’s affecting everything from assignment of poll workers to how candidates run their campaigns

TOKAJI: “I think a sign that campaigns are getting it is first off all an increased mobilization before election day,” Tokaji said. “We’ve seen get-out-the-vote efforts in Ohio in particular.”

He says that first played out in the presidential election in 2008.

Backers of the successful renewal Tuesday of a human services levy in Cuyahoga County say they started that campaign weeks earlier than usual because they recognized the early voting pattern.  Among the advantages for campaigns is that they can track people who have requested absentee ballots and target their campaigns to swaying those very likely voters.

But other counties say their voters prefer the old-fashioned way, and expect that to continue. Ron Kohler is deputy director of the Summit County Board of Elections, and says only 11 percent of Summit voters went with absentee ballots or early voting.

“I think a lot of people want to continue to vote the way they always have voted, which is to go down to the local elementary school or church or wherever their local polling place is,” Kohler said.

Ohio used to require voters to have a reason – such as being out of town or in the hospital – if they wanted to vote early. That changed in 2006.

The change has made voting more convenient, but it has not done one thing supporters hoped – increased turnout.
Professor Tokaji says only one thing has done that consistently nationwide. “Election Day registration, which has now been tried in various forms in a number of states with considerable success -- probably increasing turnout in the range of 5 to a high of 10 percent. And there are some folks who have concerns about fraud … but those concerns aren’t born out by evidence.”

Most counties in reported a turnout in Tuesday’s election in the rage of 25 percent of registered voters.