CLEVELAND — Crews were busy Thursday working to install temporary signage identifying the former Plain Dealer building off East 18th Street and Superior Avenue as the new home of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. Nearly a year after the county approved a 17-year, $91 million lease of a sizable portion of the building, almost all operations will shift to this location starting Monday.
"What is moving to this building is everything that currently happens at 2925 Euclid, pollworkers and registration, candidate services, as well as early in-person voting," said Tony Perlatti, Director of the Board of Elections.
The BOE wants to get the word out now because we're in the filing period through June 11 for those running in the September primary, which includes the Cleveland mayor and city council races. News 5 has accompanied candidates in the past as they filed on the second floor at the old BOE, but beginning Monday, that shifts about a mile away.
"This is where individuals will come to pull petitions, where they will file petitions, and off to the side, we will have our public terminals for individuals to utilize. Also, individuals coming in with questions on campaign finance or to file any kind of campaign finance documents, they will do that here at 1803 Superior Avenue," he said of the Monday transition.
The only work that will continue in the short term at the 2925 Euclid Ave. location will be the next two board meetings on Monday, May 19 and May 27.
"The first board meeting that we will conduct in this location at 1803 Superior Avenue will be on June 10," he said.
The move is, in a roundabout way, the result of what happened during an election 21 years ago. The 2004 presidential election between George Bush and John Kerry came down to Ohio. We were the deciding state, but the vote count here was delayed because of issues with voting machines, provisional ballots and long lines that led to long waits, which in turn led to Congressional hearings.
Among the immediate changes was the addition of no-excuse absentee voting by mail and the addition of in-person early voting at the Board of Elections, which wasn't built to handle the thousands that would come daily during presidential elections, especially. Voters who had to be staged, for the most part, outside, once they found a place to park.
"One of the biggest complaints we have at our current location is parking. We have parking here and parking that is under our control," said Perlatti.
Not only surface parking but also a parking garage that is undergoing renovations, set to be completed in June.
"When that becomes available and when we have the busiest of times we will literally have hundreds of parking spots that will be on the property under the control of the Board of Elections," he said.
In addition, it's convenient for those taking public transit.
"This building is on Superior between East 18th Street and East 21st. There's RTA bus lines on Superior and actually the back of the property is St. Clair, and there's bus lines on St. Clair so we have multiple bus lines," Perlatti said.
Those entering the building will do so off the parking lot on the East 18th side of the building. The new massive space for in-person early voting will be on the first floor just off the entrance to the right. As elections go, Perlatti said this was the best one to make a transition like this, given the lower volume of voters.
"For our purposes, an odd year election is the best time to break in because typically you don't have county-wide until November," he said. "While I always say every election is important, we know honestly that the turnout in an odd year is not the same as an even. So this will give us a good lead in to 2026 when we have all of our statewide contests and we will see heavy turnout, so the timing is good."
