Ohioans just aren’t voting early like they used to.

Through Monday, more than 1 million Ohio voters had requested absentee ballots, according to data from Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office. And after a week of early voting, 433,662 ballots had been received. Of those, 329,448 votes were cast in person at county elections offices.

The early in-person votes are up significantly compared to 2020, a record-setting year. But the mail-in ballot requests are way down. For comparison, after a week of early voting in 2020, 2.4 million Ohioans had requested absentee ballots, while 193,021 voted early in person. 

It’s not that surprising to hear that mail voting is lower and early in-person voting is higher compared to 2020, the unforgettable and isolating first year of the coronavirus pandemic.

But absentee ballot requests also are down from equivalent times in 2012 (1.284 million) and 2016 (1.245 million.) 

What does it all mean for this year’s election?

It’s hard to say. Voting by mail historically makes up the bulk of early voting, accounting for nearly two-thirds of the early vote in the November elections in 2020 and 2022. More recently, though, there’s been a sharp shift toward early in-person voting. Last November, 60% of the early vote was cast in person. The current early vote makeup is 75% in-person.

Perhaps the lagging absentee requests are a sign that voter turnout is down. Or maybe it will turn out the same or higher by Election Day, and the numbers simply suggest that fewer voters today are opting to vote by mail.

I track early voting closely to inform my election coverage. For instance, I used it to spot early clues about how low Black voter turnout that spelled trouble for Democrats in the 2022 election. It also foreshadowed the extraordinarily high turnout in last August’s special election. The kind of detailed data I need for the last comparable presidential election in 2016 unfortunately isn’t easily available.

This is why I’m excited about a new early voting data dashboard LaRose announced Wednesday. LaRose’s tool, if it works properly, will make this work much easier for me and others in the future.

You can read more here about LaRose’s new data dashboard, as well as more about how I think about early voting data. 

🗳️For more on this year’s November election, visit our Election Signals 2024 page.

Issue 1 primer

Early voting is well underway and Election Day is closing in fast. So, for those voters who have not had the time – or the willpower – to dive into Issue 1 yet, Signal Statewide is offering this nonpartisan cheat sheet to supplement the more detailed Issue 1 explainers we’ve already published. 

We hope you find it useful in making an informed decision, or, at least, a way to impress your friends when talking about the big issue on the Nov. 5 statewide ballot. 

You can find our jargon-free “Procrastinator’s guide to Issue I” here. 

The boys on the bus

In the era of TikTok and connected TVs, it doesn’t get more politically analog than a campaign bus tour.

But buses are so back. At least for this year’s election cycle.

Last week, the Ohio Republican Party was the latest to join the bandwagon, hitting the road for a 30-county, week-long “No on Issue 1” bus tour in towns across Ohio. I saw it for myself last Friday in Marysville, about a half-hour northwest of Columbus. It punched another square in my 2024 campaign bus bingo card, joining stops in Chillicothe for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno and in Delaware and Columbus for Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.

It’s not exactly Beatlemania for the No on Issue 1 tour. One stop in Toledo last Thursday drew exactly zero attendees, according to The Blade’s initial write-up, although a revision noted “the public was not invited.” The afternoon stop I witnessed drew a crowd of around 15, including former Republican Party Chair Gary Conklin and Tracy Richardson, the local Republican state representative. 

Ohio Republican Party Chair Alex Triantifilou said the tour is geared toward educating Republican voters who see the bus, whether it’s on the interstate or on social media. And as is the case with bus tours, the messaging isn’t exactly subtle. The side of the bus screams “Vote No on Issue 1” and “Keep Ohio Red” in big letters, with a large Ohio Republican Party label nearby.

In contrast, the Ohio Democratic Party has endorsed Issue 1. But Citizens Not Politicians, the campaign backing the measure, doesn’t include that fact on its website. This shows another example of how Republicans are trying to lean into Ohio’s red-state status while left-leaning groups are trying to hit a bankshot. The “yes” campaign group, Citizens Not Politicians, meanwhile has chosen to use its huge financial advantage on TV ads rather than on oversized yet photogenic transportation.

“Our job as a party is to get our party faithful educated on this issue, and we’ll let others do persuasion and that kind of thing,” Triantifilou said in an interview. “We just want to make sure Republicans know.”

Cash dash

Tuesday was a federal deadline for candidates to report campaign spending and fundraising for the third quarter of 2024. The campaigns for congressional Democrats running in competitive races have outraised their GOP challengers, although that doesn’t account for outside groups, which have played a major role in Ohio, especially for Republicans. 

Brown’s campaign has almost $4.5 million left in the bank after raising a net $30.7 million and spending $36.2 million. Moreno’s has $3.2 million after raising a net $6.5 million and spending $7.7 million.

Rep. Emilia Sykes, the Akron Democrat, has nearly $2.4 million in cash left after raising a net $1.3 million and spending $2.27 million. Her Republican challenger, Kevin Coughlin, has $445,000 after raising a net $452,000 and spending $202,900.

Rep. Marcy Kaptur, the Toledo Democrat, has nearly $1.7 million after raising a net $1.28 million and spending $2.2 million. Her Republican challenger, state Rep. Derek Merrin, has $430,000 after raising a net $610,000 and spending $587,400.  

And Rep. Greg Landsman of Cincinnati has $1.55 million after raising a net $845,900 and spending $1.21 million. His Republican challenger, Orlando Sonza, has $309,000 after raising a net $400,000 and spending $336,700. 

Debate duds

With nothing on the books before the Nov. 5 election, it sure looks as though this year’s U.S. Senate race is going to break precedent by not featuring a debate between Brown and Moreno.

“I’ll let you all judge that,” Brown said last week when reporters asked him if it was too late to set one up.

But that’s not the only competitive race where this is the case.

Kaptur has declined an invitation from The Blade to debate Merrin, prompting a rebuke from the Toledo newspaper’s editorial board. Sykes and Coughlin also aren’t debating, although there’s no similarly clear failure for an event to get set up.

On Friday, Oct. 18, I’ll be appearing on Columbus on the Record, the reporter roundtable discussion show on WOSU-TV in Columbus. 

Sunday, Oct. 20, is a federal deadline for political action committees that file monthly. 

On Monday, Oct. 21, slightly longer early voting hours will begin. For the week, county boards of election will be open from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m.

On Thursday, Nov. 7, while it may seem as though we’re all focused on Election Day, some at Kent State University have another date circled on their calendars. That’s when Northeast Ohio’s largest public university is hosting a “post-election reflections” event. It’s part of ongoing programming aiming to help students, staff and faculty better understand each other, per its website.