Dem
47
GOP
53
Ohio was one of many states that counted ballots arriving after Election Day if they were postmarked on or before Election Day. That is no more. Gov. Mike DeWine (R) has now signed S.B. 293, which states that ballots arriving after Election Day must not be counted. In the past, ballots arriving up to 4 days later were counted. Given how slow and erratic the USPS now is, it is hard for voters to tell when the real deadline for mailing in ballots is. Is it a week in advance? Two weeks? It depends on how aggressively the USPS wants to slow down the mail around election time.
S.B. 293 passed under the radar with no consultation with election officials. All Democrats in the Ohio legislature voted against the bill and all but three Republicans voted for it. The bill is in line with Donald Trump's goal of eliminating mail-in voting, or at least making it difficult and uncertain. If he succeeds in eliminating it altogether, then all voting will have to happen in person. This opens a myriad number of ways of doing voter suppression. For example, having just one precinct in blue cities with hundreds of thousands of voters. Many people will simply not be willing to wait 5-10 hours to vote and will go home, suppressing the vote. Another trick could be to send ICE officers, National Guardsmen, or even regular Army troops (in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act) to polling places to pull out anyone suspected of being ineligible to vote to intimidate them. The key technique the troops could use to ferret out "ineligible voters" would be to check if they have white skin. If absentee voting is allowed and made easy and reliable, these techniques don't work. (V)