YOUNGSTOWN — Despite the chaos and confusion, Mahoning Valley election officials said last week’s primary went relatively smoothly.

If they have to do it again for the general election, it will go better, they say, as long as they are given more time to prepare — even with significantly higher voter turnout in November.

“There was a lot of confusion and many people didn’t know what to do” during the primary, said Thomas McCabe, deputy director of the Mahoning County Board of Elections. “But for our first almost all-mail election, it worked out.”

Stephanie Penrose, director of the Trumbull County Board of Elections, said: “It went very well despite getting a ton of mail” late Tuesday, when the primary was held.

On Tuesday, the Trumbull board received 1,913 ballots in the mail, another 1,570 people dropped off ballots in a secured box outside the office and 90 people came to the board office to vote in person — 84 who hadn’t received their ballots in the mail in time to vote with the rest disabled, Penrose said.

Mahoning had about 6,000 people either drop off ballots at the box outside its elections board office, or ballots arrived in the mail Tuesday, McCabe said. Also, about 220 people came to the board office to vote with almost all of them being those who didn’t receive their requested ballots in the mail, he said.

Mahoning was the first larger county in the state to file its report on the night of the primary with the Ohio Secretary of State’s office, doing so around 8:30 p.m.– an hour after the polls closed.

Trumbull County filed shortly after 9:30 p.m.

But a number of larger counties — including Cuyahoga and Franklin — as well as some smaller ones didn’t file until after midnight.

NOVEMBER

If the state decides to use the same virtually all-mail process in the November general election, Penrose and McCabe said their boards will be ready as long as the decision isn’t made as late as it was for the primary.

“All-mail in the general would go better because we’d have more time to prepare,” Penrose said. “This one was very rushed. In the general, we’d be voting significantly more people than the primary. We would need time to prepare and develop a game plan.”

She added: “There’s always room for improvement, but we could get it done.”

McCabe said: “It will be easier in the general because we’ll have more time to prepare for it. This was thrown at us at the last minute. We had four weeks to do this primary.”

Easier, but not easy, he said.

“Is Mahoning County prepared to vote about 120,000 people by mail?” he said. “Ohio is geared for voting in-person on Election Day. It’s going to put a strain on all counties and the state. The hope is it’s being discussed now in Columbus that it might happen.”

In the primary, voters were mailed notices telling them how to request an absentee ballot, mailed requests to the board, which then sent ballots through the postal service, and voters then mailed back those completed ballots.

One issue that caused mass confusion in the primary was voters had to request a specific party ballot or an issues-only one, Penrose and McCabe said.

“We received hundreds of ballot requests without party affiliation and had to contact those voters,” Penrose said.

That won’t be the case in the general election because voters won’t have to request a certain ballot.

Also, the secretary of state’s office mails absentee ballot requests in even-numbered years to all voters.

Dr. Amy Acton, director of the Ohio Department of Health, canceled the March 17 in-person primary late the night before it was to be held — at the request of Gov. Mike DeWine — because of a public health concern from the COVID-19 pandemic. That happened after the state couldn’t get a judge to postpone the election.

DeWine and Secretary of State Frank LaRose called for the primary to be June 2 with mail voting extended and plans for in-person voting that day.

The state Legislature disagreed and voted March 25 for a bill with an April 28 primary with no in-person voting except for those with qualifying disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the homeless.

It took LaRose’s office until after business hours March 27, a Friday, to give county boards of elections instructions on sending out absentee ballots meaning they didn’t go out in the mail until March 30. Then there were issues with the postal system not delivering ballots to those who requested them, particularly because the deadline to request them was noon the Saturday before Tuesday’s election – and if voting by mail, the ballots had to be postmarked by Monday.

“They canceled the election the night before,” McCabe said. “They can’t do that in November. They’ll give us more time, but we’d have to process a significant amount of mail.”

If there is an in-person election, getting pollworkers could prove a challenge.

“It will be more difficult to find pollworkers in the midst of a global pandemic,” Penrose said.

McCabe said: “It’s always a challenge. We’ll have to recruit people to come back. If things are back to normal, and there isn’t a pandemic, we should be OK.”

dskolnick@tribtoday.com