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Ohio officials are preparing to once again mail unsolicited absentee ballot applications to all of Ohio’s registered voters ahead of the November election.
The Ohio Controlling Board approved spending $2.5 million on the mailing on Monday. The money will cover sending roughly 8 million ballot application packets, which will include a pre-stamped return envelope. Any voters who fill out the applications and return them to the Board of Elections office in their county will later receive a blank absentee ballot when early voting begins.
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Typically, the ballot application mailing occurs in August, while the blank ballots are mailed in early October. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office said it requested approval for the application mailing now so the state and its printing vendor have time to obtain enough envelopes and print the ballots.
Ohio has sent absentee ballot applications to every registered voter in every even-year, general election – when races for statewide and federal offices are held – since 2012.
More recently, Republican state lawmakers have required funding for the mailings to be approved by the controlling board, a state panel that includes state legislators as well as a representative from Gov. Mike DeWine’s office.
The Republican-controlled board approved the mailing without debate.
The November election will include high-profile races like governor, the U.S. Senate and U.S. House, as well as state legislative and Ohio Supreme Court races.
State officials are preparing for another universal mail ballot application as mail voting rates hit a modern low in the primary election in May.
In that May 2026 primary election, 144,000 Ohioans cast mail ballots, according to final but not-yet-certified numbers published by the Ohio Secretary of State’s office. That’s lower than the previous record low set in the May 2022 primary election, when 149,413 mail ballots were cast. In the May 2018 primary election, 185,735 voters cast mail ballots.
The result is that mail voting represents a shrinking share of the overall early vote, especially in primary election cycles, when overall voter turnout is much lower than it is in general elections.
In May, 62% of the early vote was cast in person by voters who visited county elections offices. Mail ballots made up the other 38%.
That’s a steep decline from May 2022, when 52% of early votes were cast by mail and 48% cast in person. In May 2018, 67% of the early vote was cast by mail, a percentage that was similar to both the primary and general elections in 2016.
Part of the decline in early voting is due to an increase in early, in-person voting, especially in presidential election years. In November 2024, 1.5 million people voted early and in person, a modern record. About 1 million people voted by mail in November 2024, fewer than the 1.2 million people who voted by mail in November 2016.
Here’s a chart showing year-by-year early voting numbers since 2016.
The decline of mail voting coincides with the decade President Donald Trump has spent as a dominant figure in American politics.
For years, Trump repeatedly has said mail voting is prone to fraud, a claim that’s been rejected by elections officials, voting rights groups, Democrats and some Republicans. More recently, he’s taken steps to try to restrict it, including successfully pressuring Republican-run states like Ohio last year to stop accepting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day.
Trump also has pushed Congress to ban no-fault absentee voting – which Ohio has allowed since the 2000s – in which voters can vote early without having to demonstrate a reason. A pending new executive order directs the U.S. Postal Service to screen state mail ballots to check for possible ineligible voters. Democrats have viewed the move as a way Trump may try to suppress the vote in a year that Republicans are expected to struggle nationally.
Republican lawmakers considered ending the universal mail ballot application following Trump’s loss in the November 2020 election.
Instead, they passed a law requiring each mailing to get controlling board approval. The law also newly required the Secretary of State’s Office to submit a report describing how ballot applications were mailed, how many were filled out and turned in by voters, and how many were returned by the Postal Service as undeliverable.
LaRose’s office included those figures on Monday as part of its official request for the $2.5 million for the ballot application mailing.
The report said the state mailed more than 8.3 million absentee ballot applications ahead of the November 2024 election. Of those, 526,709 were returned as undeliverable.
Elections officials apparently struggled with the requirement to report how many of the state’s ballot applications were filled out and returned by voters. LaRose’s office described the number as an estimate somewhere between 633,928 and 692,036. This would mean voters return roughly 8% of the applications.
One county, Defiance County, was unable to provide any kind of estimate, LaRose’s office said. A few other counties provided widely ranging estimates – Fairfield County reported the number to be somewhere between 153 and 4,580, Hancock said it was between 50 and 1,510, and Hocking County said it was between 22 and 653.
Overall, voters returned nearly 1.1 million absentee ballots that were mailed to them in November 2024, LaRose’s office said. There are many ways these voters could have gotten an application – one common way would be to request one online.
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State Government and Politics Reporter
I follow state government and politics from Columbus. I seek to explain why politicians do what they do and how their decisions affect everyday Ohioans. I want to close the gap between what state leaders know and what voters know. I also enjoy trying to help people see things from a different perspective. I graduated in 2008 from Otterbein University in Westerville with a journalism degree, and have covered politics and government in Ohio since then.
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