According to LaRose, over 812,000 absentee ballots were sent out in the mail Wednesday morning.
That’s a 4.4% increase from the last midterm election year in 2018.
“The more people that try it, the more people that realize what a convenient way it is to vote, whether it's early in-person here at the Board of Elections or whether it's as an absentee voter. So we've seen those numbers steadily climb,” LaRose said.
As absentee voting increases in popularity, LaRose said he wants voters to know that voting by mail is a safe way to cast a ballot. 5 county boards of elections officials agreed with LaRose on this earlier this month.
The Secretary of State’s website also has a page discussing how safe absentee voting is.
Last week, however, LaRose created a Public Integrity Division of his office. That’s a group of investigators who look into cases of potential voter fraud.
LaRose’s voter fraud task-force is similar to ones created in Republican led states across the county. They were created following Former President Donald Trump’s false claims about election security in the 2020 election.
LaRose said on Wednesday that elections in Ohio are safe and secure. His new Public Integrity Division does not mean there is voter fraud in Ohio.
“The bottom line is that voter fraud and voter suppression are exceedingly rare in Ohio, and this is how we keep it that way,” LaRose said.
0.0005% of the votes cast in the 2020 election in Ohio were potentially fraudulent according to state data.
To learn more about your absentee ballot or where your polling place is located, you can visit VoteOhio.gov.
