The Ohio Supreme Court has upheld Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s restrictive rules limiting absentee ballot drop boxes to one per county and barring anyone but the voter themselves from placing a ballot in the box, rejecting a challenge from voting-rights groups who argued the policy makes returning a mail ballot needlessly difficult for many Ohioans, according to Democracy Docket.
The rule at the center of the fight
Under directives issued by LaRose’s office, each of Ohio’s 88 counties may maintain only a single secured drop box, typically located at the county board of elections, available around the clock until polls close on Election Day. Ohio law further specifies that only the voter — or, in limited circumstances, a near relative — may personally deliver a completed absentee ballot to that box or hand it to election officials by 7:30 p.m. on Election Day.
Why challengers sued. Voting-rights advocates argued the one-drop-box-per-county cap creates a de facto burden for voters in Ohio’s larger, more populous counties, where a single drop box may sit dozens of miles from many residents, effectively forcing rural and lower-income voters without easy transportation to rely on the mail rather than a secure, quicker drop-box return. They also challenged the ban on third-party ballot delivery — sometimes called ballot collection — as an unnecessary restriction on voters who may need help returning a ballot due to illness, disability, or lack of transportation.
The court’s reasoning
The Ohio Supreme Court sided with LaRose’s office, finding the drop-box restrictions fell within the Secretary of State’s statutory authority to administer elections and did not amount to an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote. The ruling leaves the current framework — one drop box per county, personal or near-relative delivery only — in place heading into the 2026 midterms. It is not the first time the state’s highest court has weighed in on the same directive: in a 4-3 ruling in October 2024, in a case captioned Ronan v. LaRose, the court’s Republican majority had dismissed an earlier challenge from the Ohio Democratic Party on procedural grounds, finding the party waited too long to sue after early voting had already begun, without ruling on the underlying merits of the restrictions at that time.
A legislative fight in parallel
Even as the court fight concluded, Ohio lawmakers have continued to spar over the issue directly. State Reps. Joe Miller, D-Amherst, and Allison Russo, D-Upper Arlington, introduced a bill in March 2026 that would require drop boxes at every polling place and let voters return an absentee ballot to any drop box within their county, not just the single county board of elections location, according to a release from Rep. David Thomas’s office describing the Democratic proposal.
Competing views on access versus security
Republican officials, including LaRose, have defended the restrictions as necessary safeguards that ensure a clear chain of custody for every returned ballot and prevent the kind of large-scale, unsupervised ballot collection that critics of expanded drop-box access say could invite fraud or coercion. Democratic lawmakers and voting-rights groups counter that Ohio’s rules are among the most restrictive in the country and disproportionately burden voters who cannot easily make a special trip to a single county location.
The scale of the challenge for voters
Ohio has 88 counties spanning both dense urban areas and vast rural stretches, meaning a single drop box per county can require some voters to drive well over half an hour each way, particularly in the state’s larger rural counties in southeastern and northwestern Ohio. Election administrators in those counties have said they lack the budget and staffing to expand secure drop-box locations without either a change in state law or additional funding, leaving them constrained even if they wanted to add access points.
What’s next
With the state Supreme Court’s ruling now final, the existing drop-box rules will govern the 2026 general election, and the fate of the Miller-Russo expansion bill rests with the Republican-controlled legislature, which has shown little appetite so far for loosening the restrictions. Voting-rights groups say they will continue pushing for legislative change even as they shift focus to voter education about the current, more limited drop-box options ahead of November, including publicizing exact drop-box locations and hours so voters can plan trips well before the 7:30 p.m. Election Day deadline.
