YOUNGSTOWN — With only half of the mail ballots requested by voters processed – already more than a week late — and no indication when the rest would be sent, the Mahoning County Board of Elections fired the company that was supposed to handle the work.

It means that it won’t be until sometime probably late next week that more than 10,000 requested ballots by mail will be sent to voters in Mahoning County, said Tom McCabe, director of the board of elections.

McCabe said he sent a file with about 22,000 requests from Mahoning County voters for mail ballots to ElectionIQ LLC, an Akron company, that was supposed to mail them starting Oct. 8, the day early voting started.

On Oct. 11, McCabe said he noticed the board hadn’t received any returned ballots either by mail or in the drop box outside its office.

McCabe said he contacted ElectionIQ Monday and was told that half of the ballots would be printed Tuesday and the other half Wednesday.

Instead, 800 ballots were mailed Tuesday by ElectionIQ, McCabe said.

McCabe drove to ElectionIQ’s office in Akron on Wednesday to pick up 11,000 ballots that were printed and brought them to the downtown Youngstown post office to be mailed.

Some of those ballots arrived in Thursday’s mail, with the rest likely coming today or Saturday.

But the remaining 10,000-plus ballots weren’t printed by ElectionIQ as of Thursday, so McCabe said he pulled the plug on the vendor’s contract.

“In 26 years of doing this, I never had to switch vendors,” he said. “But I couldn’t trust them anymore. I’ve never had to do it. I didn’t want to do it. But we were getting a lot of calls from voters wanting to know where their ballots were, and I understand people are upset.”

ElectionIQ couldn’t be reached Thursday to comment.

McCabe said the company was printing ballots for other counties in Ohio as well as Pennsylvania.

ElectionIQ did a good job with the March 19 primary, and there were a few minor issues with the ballots in the special June 11 election for the 6th Congressional District race, McCabe said.

“We had a meeting with them in mid-September where we wanted to not be pushed to the back,” McCabe said. “We moved ahead without breaking a contract, but we were left with no choice. It’s frustrating, but I think we did the right thing by switching horses in the middle of the stream. When you can’t get answers you have to do it.”

McCabe described it as “a worst-case scenario that happened.”

He added: “I apologize to voters.”

After calling around to other vendors, McCabe said he got Graphic Village of Blue Ash on Thursday to agree to print the county’s mail ballots – as well as the Election Day ballots, which was initially contracted to ElectionIQ.

Graphic Village, which also is doing ballots for other counties, agreed to handle the ballots for Mahoning County. But McCabe said the ballots won’t be printed until Tuesday or Wednesday.

Rather than have Graphic Village mail the ballots from the Cincinnati area, with mail then going to Cleveland and finally Mahoning County, McCabe said he will drive to Graphic Village to pick up the ballots and mail them directly from the Youngstown post office the day they’re ready.

McCabe said the Youngstown post office has been very cooperative with the board and agreed to have the ballots mailed directly from its location rather than have mail sent to Cleveland and then back here.

Even so, a number of those 10,000-plus requested mail ballots may not arrive in people’s mailboxes until the end of next week, which is cutting it close for some voters.

Ballots have to be postmarked by Nov. 4, the day before the election, and arrive at the board of elections in the mail by Nov. 9, four days after the election, to be counted.

Douglas Frank Lev of Youngstown said he and his father, Irving, who is 102 years old, are frustrated by the delay.

“I’m surprised and really disappointed by this, especially these days with cries of election fraud,” Lev said. “This should have been addressed sooner. I am shocked by this.”

Lev said he might bring his ballot and that of his father to the drop box in front of the board of elections. However, a directive ordered by Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, and upheld in a 4-3 Ohio Supreme Court decision — with four Republicans voting in support of LaRose and three Democrats in opposition — requires Lev to go inside the board to sign an attestation if he wants to drop off his father’s ballot.

“If I have to do that, I will,” Lev said.

A traveling beer salesman from Mahoning County, who didn’t want his name used, said he is often out of the area on business and that’s why he wanted to vote by mail. If there is too much of a delay — and that may be the case — he said he might not be able to vote, which he considers being disenfranchised.

Amy Kendricks of Ellsworth, who requested a mail ballot, said she became concerned about the delay and voted Thursday at the board’s early voting center

“Absentee voting is crucial to our democracy and fair elections,” she said. “I am concerned that people will not receive their ballot in time and their vote will not be counted.”

Stephanie Penrose, director of the Trumbull County Board of Elections, said the nearly 18,000 requests for mail ballots her county board received are being handled in-house.

On Oct. 8, about 15,000 of them were mailed with the rest processed as they came in, she said.