Approximately 3,000 Cincinnati voters who have already been mailed absentee ballots will be getting a second one in the mail soon, thanks to an Ohio Supreme Court decision last week.
They'll also be getting a letter from the Hamilton County Board of Elections asking them to re-vote their new absentee ballots and return them to the board.
It's all because the Ohio Supreme Court ordered the board to restore sections of Issue 4, the charter amendment that would change the city of Cincinnati's pension system. The pro-Issue 4 committee had gone to court to force the change.
But the board had already mailed out more than 3,000 absentee ballots to city voters containing the old language on Issue 4.
The new ballots will contain not just the new ballot issue language, but all of the candidate races and other issues.
Tim Burke, the Hamilton County elections board chairman, said if voters send back the completed second ballot, that one will be counted and the first one discarded. Burke said the board will have to decide later what to do if voters send in only the ballot with the old Issue 4 language.
