CLEVELAND (AP) — Voters in Cuyahoga County, the most populated county in Ohio, will be encouraged to vote by absentee ballot in the Nov. 7 general election, county commissioners said Wednesday.
Commissioners also have asked Tom Hayes, who is leaving his job as director of the Ohio Lottery on Aug. 21, to work for the county from Sept. 1 until Nov. 10 as a project manager to oversee the county Board of Elections' preparation and performance. Hayes has agreed.
Hayes, a former board of elections director in the county, was part of a three-member panel that recently reviewed the county's error-prone election performance in the May primary, the first using touch-screen electronic voting.
Voting by absentee ballot would allow voters to bypass electronic voting and possible long lines at the polls, which officials worry could be a side-effect of a new requirement that voters show identification.
Commissioner Tim Hagan said the expected vote total in November is likely to be between 550,000 and 600,000. He said the three-member commission believes that more than 100,000 votes could be cast on paper absentee ballots that would be tabulated by optical scanners.
http://www.cleveland.com/newsflash/cleveland/index.ssf?/base/news-26/1155169154326600.xml&storylist=clevelandNote: I'm not sure I would trust Tom Hayes completely, he's a DINO who has worked for Taft the last few years.