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ST. CLAIRSVILLE -- The Belmont County Board of Elections is putting the word out to voters about changes in voting laws ahead of the May 2 primary election.
Deputy Director Kamron Chervenak said several changes resulted from Ohio House Bill 458.
"The new law will be in effect for this election, meaning you have to have a photo ID whenever you go and vote, that kind of thing will be implemented," she said. "We've not really had any type of feedback at all from the public. We are working our best obviously to inform the public of these changes.
"In the past you've been able to take a utility bill and use that as identification at the polls, and now you have to have a photo identification, whether it's a driver's license or a passport, and it has to be current. It cannot be expired as well, so that's one of the bigger changes," she said.
"Another change is the requesting of absentee by mail," she said.
The deadline is now the Tuesday before the election, or April 25 for the next election.
"The entire week before, you have to have your application in, with us, filed, for you to do it by mail," she said.
In addition, Chervenak noted there will be no more early voting on the Monday before the election.
"They removed the Monday before the election, but they added those hours elsewhere throughout the schedule," she said.
Chervenak said it is important to inform both new voters and longtime ballot casters of the changes.
"It'll affect everybody, even people who have voted for 50 years," she said.
She added that the board could not anticipate any trends in early voting.
"It depends on the election. It depends on the person. It depends on scenarios. There's a lot of different factors that go into whether a person is absentee voting," she said. "We have some people who do it continuously, but there's still some people that love to go out Election Day and vote as well."
She said the board also awaits instructions from the state.
"With this House bill, obviously the state has issued quite a few new directives now, the various changes that we have to go through to ensure that we are following legal requirements," she said. "This is still a very new House bill, and the state is still working to read through it and develop a plan to successfully implement it throughout the state of Ohio with all the different 88 counties."
Chervenak also reported the board approved the allocation of poll workers for the election, with fewer than the usual four poll workers per precinct.
"We only have 17 precincts open this upcoming May election, so with that being a small election we're going with three poll workers per precinct. We also made an approval to order the ballots and how many ballots we're going to order. We stuck with our normal 10 percent over the amount of registered voters that are currently in that precinct.
"It's hard to tell with this industry. You can never really predict what voter turnout's going to be," she said. "We've not received a whole lot of absentee applications thus far that are received by mail."
The next board meeting will be held 4 p.m. April 17 at the board office, 52180 National Road.