CLEVELAND — The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections is asking voters to carefully check the highlighted portions of ballot applications. 

What You Need To Know

  • Hundreds of Cuyahoga County voters had their ballot applications rejected for not being properly filled out

  • Some ballot applications are missing the date of birth or is filled in with the current date instead of the date of birth

  • Voters with a rejected application will get a letter informing them of the rejection

  • Filling out a ballot application incorrectly will cause a delay in receiving a ballot

On Wednesday, the Board of Elections said that it has rejected 500 ballots for next month’s municipal elections due to date-of-birth errors. The errors, the board said, could delay when voters will get their mail-in ballots. 

Those who have their ballot applications rejected are sent a letter stating the reason why the application was rejected along with a new ballot application and information on how to contact the Board of Elections’ ballot department. 

“The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections is advising voters to be mindful of completing all the yellow highlighted sections on the Vote-by-Mail ballot application,” the Board of Elections said. “The most common error found on an application has been a date of birth missing, or an alternate date, such as the current date, being written in.”

As of Wednesday, there have been 1,525 ballot applications rejected by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, according to the BOE. Of those, 701 voters have corrected their ballot application.

The Cuyahoga County BOE said it has processed 59,609 mail-in ballot applications for the Nov. 2 general election. Of those, 6,689 ballots have been returned. 

Those are in addition to 797 voters who have cast a ballot in person at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, according to the BOE’s data.

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