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Secretary Of State Wants To Make Changes To Get Ready For 2012

There are 617 days till the presidential election in 2012. And Ohio’s new secretary of state has a couple of proposals that he says will help the state be ready, so voters can focus on the candidates and not the elections process. Republican Jon Husted says he wants statewide standards on no-fault absentee voting, which voters are using in bigger numbers each election.

“One of the things that I often hear people complain about is that there’s no uniformity between how counties do these things," he says. "That some voters are given access differently than others, that this has led to the impression that perhaps sometimes our elections are not as fair and reliable as we would expect them to be. And I believe this will go a long way toward satisfying those concerns.”

Husted wants to shorten the early voting period – to 21 days before election day by mail and 16 days for in person voting. But he wants all 88 boards of elections to be open during the two Saturdays in that period. He also wants to allow voters to register and change their address online, and to improve the state’s voter database to catch bad addresses or dead voters. And Husted says he wants a better provisional ballot system – so those voters would be asked to provide their full social security number.

He’s hoping to find sponsors for this legislation and get it passed and in place by the May election.