Cuyahoga County Board of Elections Director Anthony Perlatti doesn’t want to talk too much about House Bill 472, passed last week and which requires people to submit a photo ID when voting by mail beginning in November, 2027.
Perlatti is worried doing so could create confusion for Ohioans using absentee ballots in the upcoming November election. This year’s election does not require voters to provide photo identification when seeking an application for an absentee ballot or when returning it.
“I think our big thing for this year is making sure that voters understand it is not in effect for this year, to not start sending us their pictures because that’s not the law for 2026 and so we’ll cross that bridge as we get closer to the election,” he said during Tuesday’s Cuyahoga County Board of Elections meeting.
Currently, to use an absentee ballot, voters must provide other information — such as a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number — which is matched against their registration and tied to databases such as the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
Perlatti, a Democrat, told Signal Cleveland after the board meeting that he’s not opposed to requiring ID to vote by mail, but he doesn’t like this bill, passed along party lines just one day after it was introduced. He and some of his election-official peers, including Republicans, say the bill leaves too many details unclear about the processing of mail-in ballots with photo ID attached.
“This is just bad for election administration,” he said. “It has nothing to do with the concept of IDs and what should or shouldn’t be accepted. It leaves the potential for just a nightmare. And then trying to work through that.”
Gov. Mike DeWine has until next Wednesday to sign the bill and has repeatedly declined to comment on it since its passage.
DeWine said Tuesday he’s not talking about any of the bills on his desk.
“We are still in the process of going through those bills,” he said. “It’s like Christmas and opening the presents, you’re not really sometimes sure what’s in them.”
Even if DeWine signs it, Perlatti said until the Ohio Secretary of State’s office issues directives on many of the bill’s requirements, he and other leaders can’t begin preparing. Secretary of State Frank LaRose is not seeking re-election this November because of term limits, so directives will likely fall to his successor in January, Perlatti said.
The new bill requires the secretary of state to also create an online portal to allow voters to request an absentee ballot, a change from the current system, which requires voters to fill out and mail in or hand deliver a paper form. The portal also has to be capable of accepting a photo ID and recording a voter’s face.
“I agree you have to prove who you are to vote by mail, but that doesn’t mean that the only way to do that is through photo ID,” Perlatti said.
He said among the many processing issues that have to be clarified are how to store and retain copies of voters’ photo IDs, how to verify that the copies haven’t been tampered with and what photo database the photos will be compared against.
A board member of the Ohio Association of Elections Officials, Perlatti said election boards don’t have a database of voter pictures against which to compare copies of drivers’ licenses, passports and military identification. Representatives of the elections association testified against the bill last week.
“I really can’t figure anything out now because it is so gray,” he said. “There are so many what ifs, and all those things. And this needs to have clarity, and those clarities don’t come from individual boards ruling on something. It’s guidance from the state.”
State leaders frequently hold out Ohio as the “gold standard” for election integrity. Perlatti said he sees the latest bill as potentially disenfranchising voters if it’s implemented poorly.
“It should be difficult to cheat, but at the same token, it should not be impossible to vote,” he said.
Signal Statehouse Reporter Andrew Tobias contributed to this story.
