SUMMIT COUNTY, Ohio — Absentee voters in several Ohio counties may find their ballots arriving later than expected. Around 95,000 absentee voters in Summit County alone will be getting their ballots late, and it’s largely because of the coronavirus pandemic.

 

What You Need To Know

  • Nearly 95,000 voters are waiting to receive ballots in Summit County

  • Midwest Direct, the company responsible for the ballots, fell behind when more ballots were needed than anticipated

  • Voters can mail in ballots or drop them in a drop box at the Summit County Board of Elections once the ballots are received

“We were notified (Thursday) officially by Midwest Direct that due to the quantity of absentee ballot requests for the counties that they are working with that they were basically triple what they had initially expected quantity wise and so they had fallen behind a little bit," said Lance Reed, the director of the Summit County Board of Elections.

Reed said even though the ballots are delayed, Midwest Direct, a Cleveland-based ballot printing and mailing company, has a plan in place to get them out as quickly as possible.

“We got notification from them this morning that they’re expecting 20,000 to 30,000 of our ballots to be inserted and mailed out today. With the expectation that we have the same number roughly tomorrow being Saturday and the same number being stuffed and inserted on Sunday, so that everything can be mailed out at the latest Monday and then voters can start getting their ballots next week.”

Reed said there is about a week delay right now for voters getting their ballots but he said they shouldn’t worry.

“If voters are going to return their ballot by mail almost immediately as soon as they get it, then that still gives them two and a half, almost three weeks for them to get their ballots back to us. If for some reason they think that they are on any type of a time crunch, we do have much larger drop box that we actually just installed (Thursday) that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It’s under complete camera surveillance security that they’d be able to drop it off anytime of day if they felt that they were under any kind of a crunch so that they can get their voted ballots returned to us before the 7:30 p.m.dDeadline on election day, Nov. 3.”

Reed said if voters have any concerns they can reach out to the board of elections for help, though he does ask voters to wait until the end of next week to give their ballot time to arrive. But if the ballot isn’t received by the end of the week, the voter should reach out immediately.

Summit County is just one of 22 counties dealing with delayed ballots from midwest direct. Spectrum News 1 reached out to the company for a statement but did not hear back.