Media
The National Memo: Ohio Primary Raises New Election Worry: Rejected Provisional Ballots
"We have 1.4 million ballots cast. There are still 500,000 that have not yet been reported back in," said Mike Brickner, Ohio director for AllVotingIsLocal.org, at the Lawyers' Committee briefing on primary day. "There's a lot of concern that many of those ballots may not reach voters in time, and many [voters] do not want to go to the boards of elections today because they have health concerns or other issues."
CBS News: 2020 Daily Trail Markers: Ohio wraps up mail-in primary
Mike Brickner, Ohio's state director for All Voting is Local, said Ohio's mail-in primary is a learning opportunity on how vote-by-mail can be further improved for future elections during the coronavirus pandemic. "We can't predict what's going to happen with this global pandemic, except that we can predict that until we have a vaccine, the virus is going to be here in our communities," Brickner said. "We have to start planning for what the impact is that that's going to be for November election."
Low voter turnout and confusion highlight Ohio’s delayed primary election
“Voters had called into their Board of Elections inquiring about the provisional voting process and the [people] who answered those phones at those various Boards of Elections said ‘we don’t have provisional voting on Tuesday, it’s only for disabled and homeless voters,’ ” said Mike Brickner, who leads the Ohio division of All Voting is Local.
ideastream: Ohio Wraps Up Delayed Primary Election Under Shadow Of Coronavirus
“The situation where votes have been put into, where many have had to choose between their right to vote and their own health is one that no voter should ever be put in again,” Mike Brickner, the Ohio state director for All Voting Is Local, told ideastream.
The Columbus Dispatch: Confusion, light turnout mark in-person voting
Mike Brickner, the Ohio director of All Voting is Local, added: “What we’re seeing now is that a lot of those voters did not receive absentee ballots.” On Monday, the Ohio secretary of state’s office reported that 1.97 million Ohioans requested vote-by-mail ballots for the primary, and about 1.46 million of them had already cast ballots, leaving more than 500,000 ballots outstanding.
WKSU: Ohio’s Unusual Primary Election Is Almost Over
This election, like many things these days, is unprecedented. Ohio voters who didn’t cast ballots before March 17th were instructed to vote by mail. But Mike Brickner with All Voting is Local says his group is hearing from confused voters who didn’t get their ballots in the mail or didn’t understand the voting process. “It has been very confusing, very frustrating for voters," Brickner says.