Ohio House OKs bill to shrink early voting period

ANN SANNER

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — The Ohio House has passed a bill that would shorten the early vot­ing period in what’s tra­di­tion­ally a pres­i­den­tial bat­tle­ground state.

The leg­is­la­tion passed on a 53–39 vote Wednes­day, despite Democ­rats’ crit­i­cism that shrink­ing the period would cre­ate longer lines and dis­cour­age voting.

Cur­rently, there’s a 35-day early vot­ing period.

Under the bill, vot­ers could cast their bal­lots by mail 21 days before Elec­tion Day. It would allow in-person vot­ing to start 10 days before the elec­tion but include lim­its that would leave Ohioans only six days to cast bal­lots in person.

The mea­sure also gets rid of a dis­puted five-day period in which new vot­ers can reg­is­ter and then imme­di­ately cast ballots.

The pro­posal also would move the 2012 pres­i­den­tial pri­mary in Ohio from March to May.

Posted by AP News on May 18 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.