CLEVELAND — Voters lined up outside the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections Tuesday morning ahead of in-person early voting starting at 8 a.m. It's the first big election since the BOE moved from 30th and Euclid to 18th and Superior last year.
"This will be, while we've had multiple elections, our first, like, really high-turnout major election in our new facility, so we're excited for that," said Anthony Perlatti, Director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. "We think that we're really going to be able to take advantage of what we were able to move from."
The BOE moved into its previous location before in-person early voting became a thing. But the building was thrust into the national spotlight during the 2004 presidential election, which came down to Ohio, when election day problems led to long lines and other issues that delayed the final vote. In 2004, the state legislature cleared the way for no-excuse early voting by mail or early in person, with Cuyahoga County trying multiple times to make the best use of its space.
"While we adapted and we made the space work, it wasn't set up or created for what we needed to do," Perlatti said. "We've all seen the footage from before down the street and around the corner," he said of the lines of hundreds that would stretch outside the building during presidential elections especially.
"This place is more purpose-built," he said of the building that once housed the offices of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which allows more inside space not only for voting but for checking voters in and areas for lines out of the elements. Combined with vote by mail, Cuyahoga County has continuously been the state leader in early voting.
"We will have 30% of the votes cast prior to election day, which is great, something that takes a great deal of the stress off of the election day operations," he said.
Early in-person voting hours at the state's Boards of Election are currently from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. through October 23, with weekend and expanded hours as we close in on election day.
In addition to in-person early voting, the first of the vote-by-mail ballots also went out in the mail Tuesday to some of the more than 100,000 voters in Cuyahoga County who have already requested them.
