2014 Ohio voter deadlines and registration

Politics & Elections
1

Today, Monday, October 6, 2014 is the deadline to register to vote in Ohio. If you haven’t registered before this, you must get your paperwork in today.

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/elections/Voters/register.aspx

You can download the voter registration form there. As long it’s postmarked today, your registration will be registered within twenty business days. You can check the progress of your registration at that cite as well.

If you want, you can fill out the paperwork and hand it personally at your county’s board of elections. Here’s a current list of those places:

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/elections/electionsofficials/boeDirectory.aspx#dir
If you wish to vote by mail, the deadline to request an absentee by mail ballot is Noon of Saturday, November 1.

In-person early voting is held at your county board of elections on specific dates and times. Here is a calendar with the general dates and times. If you wish to vote in-person, you should call your county board of elections to double check the times they will be available.

In Ohio, these early in-person votes are technically the same as the absentee ballots. You can go to the place and fill them out, but the ballots will be held with other absentee ballots until Election Day. They won’t be counted ahead of time.

Absentee ballots by mail must be postmarked by, and early voting ends on, Monday, November 3.

Election day is Tuesday, November 4. The poll hours are 6:30am - 7:30pm. You can find your polling location here:
http://voterlookup.sos.state.oh.us/voterlookup.aspx?http://www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/pollinglocation.aspx?page=361

If you didn’t get your Absentee ballot by mail post marked by Monday, November 3, you can still hand it in at your county board of elections, which I linked above.

2

Bugger - I can’t believe I didn’t include the link to the calendar of voting days, even though I referred to it several times. It here comes now:

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/elections/Voters/2014daysVoting.aspx

3

Don’t forget to take ID to your polling place:

4

I plan to vote after work today at my local Board of Elections. I’ll be working as a pollworker on election day but not at my own voting location so I have to vote early. The upcoming election day here in Ohio will probably be busier than the primary we had in May but less stressful for pollworkers. The primary was my third outing as a pollworker and the first time both major parties had contests – meaning this was the first time we had to ask voters what ballot they wanted. I was surprised that several people were shocked that we would ask such a question and didn’t seem to understand the explanation. Thanks to Merneith and Frank for the helpful information and links!

5

What is with all this deadline stuff?
Why is there any deadline – what purpose does it serve?

Here in Minnesota, you can register and vote up to the closing time of the polling place on Election Day (and even after, if there are lines). And we have the highest voter turnout in the USA.

6

To ensure that the residency requirement (in Ohio, 30 days) is met. I guess Minnesota is willing to take the voter’s word on Election Day that they’ve lived in Minnesota for 20 days.

7

Yeah. I’d rather that there were federal standards for elections but each state does it differently. That’s my real motivation for starting the thread. Voting procedures are weird and occult and I wanted to get the info out for my own state, at least.

Thanks for coming in with the ID requirements, Frank! I should have thought to include them.

8

Its easy. Walk up, step firmly on their foot. If they instantly apologize, they are natives. Baja Canada.