Election Day is Tuesday, but more than 1.7 million Ohioans will have cast their ballots already.
The final early vote total broke the record for the highest turnout yet for a midterm election, Secretary of State Frank LaRose said in a news release Monday.
“Ohioans crushed the 2022 early voting record for a gubernatorial election,” he said. “Ohio is the Gold Standard, and I’m proud that we are seeing yet another record-breaking year.”
The state recorded close to 1.1 million votes cast at county boards of elections, which serve as early voting sites beginning in October until the last Sunday before the election.
Additionally, more than 630,000 mail-in ballots had been returned as of Nov. 1. That accounts for about 86% of all the mail-in ballots requested this year. Ohioans who requested one but haven’t returned it yet must bring it to their local board of elections no later than 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
Statewide, voting by mail was far less utilized this year, down more than 26%, from 1 million requests in 2022 to 730,000 requests in 2026.
But Cuyahoga County had the most early voters, according to Secretary of State data, just because of its high number of mail-in ballots requested and returned.
Of all the counties, Franklin County processed the most voters at its early voting center. Board of Elections Director Antone White said in October the center could handle as many as 800 voters an hour. A long line of them snaked the lot Sunday afternoon, with multi-hour waits, according to voters the Statehouse News Bureau interviewed.
