A non-competitive race for Ohio Governor this year as opposed to 2010 as well as the U.S. Supreme Court siding with the Ohio GOP on cutting a week of our early voting led to a decrease in the # of absentee ballots requested from 2010.
Early voting applications were sent to 6 million voters in Ohio with about 750,000 Ohioans requesting or casting an absentee ballot.The absentee ballots were sent out with federal money, but once Ohio runs out of the money, then it will be the job of the state legislature to appropriate new state funding for sending them out and Secretary of
Suppression State Jon Husted will only send them if he chooses to. Obviously, when that time comes, that won't run smoothly.
Early voting requests is also taking a big toll out of Cuyahoga County, the most populous and one of the most Democratic counties in the state. Despite the fact that the leading Democrat, Ed FitzGerald is from here, there's 60,000 less absentee ballots requested this year than in 2010; with only 130,000 requested from our county this year. There's just a huge lack of Democratic enthusiasm that will result in low turnout among many women and minorities.
For the whole state of Ohio, early voting requests are relatively the same as 2010,
but there's a -2 shift for absentee requests by Democratic voters and a +1 shift by Republican voters:2014: Democrats - 55%, Republicans - 25%, Independent/Unaffiliated - 19%
2010: Democrats - 57%, Republicans - 24%, Independent/Unaffiliated - 20%
