Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose asked Statehouse leaders to create legislation to eliminate ballot drop boxes after a court ruled that people with disabilities should have more opportunities to vote. Using his own authority, he has put more steps in place to make sure voters can operate the drop boxes before the November election.
Nearly four million Ohioans voted last November, state data shows, with 1 in 4 voting by mail.
State Sen. Bill DeMora, a Columbus Democrat, worries that LaRose’s fresh proposals will make that goal much harder to achieve.
“Working people are working — they go home, they vote, they go to the polling station, knowing that the law already states that it has to be a safe place that has to be monitored,” DeMora said.
On Friday, LaRose issued a directive that requires anyone delivering an absentee ballot to another person to sign a certification that they are acting in compliance with state law — meaning they must go to an election board to sign the form.
“In practice, this means that only the voter’s personal vote can be placed in the ballot box,” LaRose ordered.
The Secretary also sent a letter to parliamentary leaders asking them to drastically limit the number of people who can put postal votes in the ballot box, or to eliminate the operate of the box altogether.
DeMora called it ridiculous.
“It hurts working people, working families, college students — obviously those who don’t vote Republican,” DeMora said. “They make it harder for people to vote, they make it harder for people to take their spouse’s ballot to the only place in the county where they have the right to drop off their ballot, they do everything they can to make it harder to vote.”
In his letter, LaRose explained that he was concerned about ballot harvesting — someone collecting a lot of other people’s votes and sending them in. But there is currently a specific list of people who can send absentee ballots.
In 2023, Ohio House of Representatives Bill 458 changed state law so the only people eligible to deliver a sealed absentee ballot, besides the voter, are members of the postal service or specific relatives. This includes a spouse, parent, grandparent, child, sibling, aunt or uncle, niece or nephew. This does not include caregivers, day care workers, grandchildren, cousins, neighbors, friends or any other non-relatives.
If someone who is not listed returns a ballot, it is a fourth-degree felony. If a voter is convicted of a felony for helping a loved one, they will no longer be able to vote on their own.
Case Western Reserve University election law professor Atiba Ellis explained that the letter follows a case LaRose lost in federal court earlier this summer.
“These proposals come in the wake of a recent lawsuit that required the state of Ohio to provide more opportunities for people with disabilities to get assistance with voting,” Ellis said.
Jen Miller of the League of Women Voters of Ohio (LWV) filed a lawsuit with the ACLU alleging that Ohio is violating the federal Americans with Disabilities Act and the Voting Rights Act.
The U.S. District Court sided with Miller and invalidated that particular provision of the law.
LaRose said in his letter that LWV wants to “make Ohio elections less secure and more susceptible to fraud, especially with respect to the use of drop boxes.”
“This effectively creates an unintended loophole in Ohio’s ballot harvesting law that we must address,” he said. “The security of mail-in ballot delivery remains paramount, so that leaves us with an obvious question of remedy.”
We reached out to LaRose’s office to ask exactly what legal loophole the LWV created, but did not receive a response.
This ruling has just invalidated the only provision concerning disabled people who can only cast a postal vote on their behalf.
To be clear, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud. However, Republican leaders across the country have questioned mail-in or drop-off voting.
“The desire to eliminate drop boxes and narrow the ways people vote — to what seems like in-person voting on Election Day — stems from the belief that the other methods are somehow automatically fraudulent,” Ellis explained.
There have been scarce cases of earnest election fraud committed through mailboxes, according to an impartial expert professor.
“Too often, the evidence of fraud is that partisans, especially Republicans, in other states tried to manipulate mail-in votes,” he continued.
DeMora said LaRose is trying to stay relevant after losing the U.S. Senate primary earlier this year.
“It’s another solution, another MAGA solution to a problem that doesn’t exist here,” DeMora said, taking a long dig at LaRose — even asking the secretary to run against him for state Senate in 2026 to see what happens. “It’s time for him to just go away and leave the people of Ohio alone because we have fair elections and he’s just trying to ruin them.”
DeMora added that this is yet another way LaRose is trying to block the passage of the November redistricting amendment.
LaRose says his goal is not to disenfranchise voters but to protect against fraud that could occur.
He also proposed two other ideas in his letter. He asked lawmakers to adopt a requirement for proof of citizenship to register voters and to make changes to provisional voting.
We reached out to both House Speaker Jason Stephens, a Kitts Hill Republican, and Senate President Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican, for comment on LaRose’s proposal.
“This is an important issue we need to consider to ensure the security of our elections,” Stephens said.
Huffman spokesman John Fortney also said the Senate would consider the proposal.
“Protecting the integrity of Ohio’s elections remains a priority as we witness the impact of the Biden Administration’s dangerous failure to secure the border. Secretary LaRose has led efforts to protect Ohio’s elections system by working with the General Assembly to pass sound voter identification laws, including photo ID. We look forward to continuing the conversation to protect our state and local elections from this growing threat,” Fortney said.
But not all Ohio Republicans agreed with LaRose’s baseless claims about vote-harvesting. When asked about it, Gov. Mike DeWine physically mocked LaRose’s ideas.
“Look, I’ve consistently said I think we do a very good job in Ohio running elections,” DeWine said. “I think anyone who wants to change what we’re doing has the burden of proof to prove there’s a problem with what we’re doing now.”
Ohio lawmakers are not expected to return to work until after the November election, so drop boxes can still be used — but more steps will need to be taken.
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“This article was originally published on News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content-sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ stories, it is not available for free republication by other news outlets because it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland.
