Push to replace voting machines with paper ballots in two counties continues

A push to use paper ballots instead of voting machines continues in a pair of rural Ohio counties, according to a report.

Residents in Monroe and Seneca counties appealed decisions from local boards of elections to block the question from appearing on November’s ballot.

“We’re not mandating that all counties in Ohio stop using electronic voting systems and be forced to go back to hand-marked, hand-counted paper ballots,” Tim Stechschulte, co-director of the Coalition of Concerned Voters of Ohio, told Cleveland.com. “This is to get it on the ballot and let the voters decide.”

Earlier this month, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose thwarted an effort launched by residents in the two counties to ban voting machines. In doing so, the state’s top elections officials ruled that the process they attempted to use was illegal under Ohio law.

LaRose issued advisory No. 2025-04 regarding petitions filed by residents in Seneca and Monroe counties using Secretary of State Form No. 6-D. In essence, LaRose said state law only allows voters to adopt voting machines; they cannot repeal them once implemented.

The election boards in Monroe and Seneca counties voted to reject the citizen petitions after LaRose handed down his opinion.

Concerns about voting machines have been recurring in election discussions for years. They generally center on the notion that voting machines can be hacked or unreliable.

Concerns have long predated those raised by President Trump after his loss in the November 2020 presidential election. However, many media outlets today overlook or neglect to mention earlier concerns about voting machines.

“It is a question of security risks and vulnerability, so I would not look at this from the lens of what is the existing fraud,” Marcell Strbich, a Republican who is running to replace LaRose, told The Statehouse News Bureau.

The Statehouse News Bureau, citing information from Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office, reported that although “88 counties in Ohio own and use different machines, every county has an either entirely electronic system or some combination of electronic tabulation with a paper ballot or paper audit trail.”

While proponents of moving to paper ballots argue it would mitigate security risks and potential vulnerabilities, critics contend that hand-counting ballots would be less secure and slow down the ballot-counting process.

“If you exclusively hand-counted ballots, it would be less secure, because right now what we have is a redundant process—where they’re counted electronically for that result on election night, and then they’re counted as part of post-election audits by hand,” LaRose told The Statehouse News Bureau.

That position is backed by the League of Women Voters.

“Moving back to paper ballots would reduce voter accessibility, take much longer to tally election results, lead to inaccurate counts through human error and waste taxpayer money,” Ohio’s League of Women Voters Executive Director Jen Miller told Cleveland.com.

Separately, in a post to Truth Social, President Trump vowed to lead a movement to eliminate mail-in ballots and “Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES.”

“We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting,” the president said in the post. “All others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED. WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT, WHICH WILL BE STRONGLY OPPOSED BY THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE THEY CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.

“Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,” Trump added. “They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”