More Than 922,000 Ohioans Have Already Voted, Most of Them in Person

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More than 922,000 Ohioans have already cast a ballot in the Nov. 3 general election, and most of them did it the old fashioned way, by showing up in person.

Figures from the Ohio Secretary of State’s election dashboard, through Friday, Oct. 23, show 922,793 ballots cast statewide, about 11.2 percent of Ohio’s roughly 8.2 million registered voters. Of those, 527,760 people voted early in person at their county board of elections.

Mail voting is running the other direction. Counties have issued 712,710 absentee ballots, and 395,033 had been returned as of Friday, a return rate of about 55 percent. Requests for mail ballots are down about 26 percent from 2022.

Early in-person voting, meanwhile, opened at about four times the pace of the 2022 midterms, and local officials say the lines have stayed steady since. In Franklin County, about 88,000 residents had voted by Oct. 22, split almost evenly between roughly 44,500 in-person voters and 44,000 returned mail ballots. Franklin County Board of Elections Director Antone White has said he expects early in-person turnout to more than double what the county saw in 2022.

Who is voting early

Ohio does not register voters by party. The state’s dashboard labels voters by which party’s primary ballot they pulled in the last two calendar years, and that label says nothing about how anyone voted in this election.

By that count, of the 452,210 early ballots in hand through Thursday, Oct. 15, 37.2 percent came from voters with a Democratic primary history, 28.0 percent from voters with a Republican primary history, and 33.6 percent from unaffiliated voters who had not pulled either party’s primary ballot. The Democratic share has eased as more ballots arrive; it stood at 39.7 percent two days earlier.

At the top of the ballot, voters are deciding a governor’s race between Vivek Ramaswamy and Amy Acton and a U.S. Senate special election between Jon Husted and Sherrod Brown, alongside county and local races and issues across southern Ohio.

Still time to vote early, and a warning on mail ballots

Early in-person voting continues at every county board of elections. Hours are 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. today, Tuesday, Oct. 27; 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, Oct. 28 to 30; 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 31; and 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 1, the last day of early voting. Polls are open 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Voters still holding a mail ballot should know the rule changed this year. Under Senate Bill 293, there is no grace period after Election Day. A mail ballot must reach the board of elections by 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 3 to be counted, so anyone voting by mail this late is safer dropping the ballot off at their county board in person rather than trusting the post office.

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