CLEVELAND — With the election only two weeks away, Cleveland-based Midwest Direct announced on Tuesday that it has completed the process of printing and delivering vote-by-mail ballots to the U.S. Postal Service after delays brought scrutiny from state leaders and national publications.
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In a statement, the company says it processed and delivered 'an unprecedented one million vote-by-mail ballots and more than 1.4 million election day ballots in two states to the Postal Service over the past 14 days.'
"We are up-to-date with all ballot orders as of yesterday and we anticipate timely fulfillment as we move through the rest of the vote-by-mail process, which will continue through Saturday, October 31, the last day of mailing," co-owner and CEO Richard Gebbie says. “We are proud of our team’s efforts in processing this unprecedented number of ballots in the short time we had to complete them, and we thank them for their diligent efforts. We brought in extra staff, expanded hours and added equipment to meet the staggering volume of mail-in ballot requests for this election. In many cases, we processed three times the volume of requests the county board of elections anticipated.”
The update from Midwest Direct comes after Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose took the company to task for "failing to meet expectations " and "overpromising and underdelivering" in a social media video posted on Monday night.
16 counties in Ohio had hired Midwest Direct for printing and mailing absentee ballots.
- Butler
- Clinton
- Cuyahoga
- Defiance
- Fulton
- Henry
- Lorain
- Lucas
- Mahoning
- Miami
- Stark
- Summit
- Trumbull
- Union
- Williams
- Wood
LaRose says nine of the 16 counties decided to opt-out of working with Midwest Direct and process their ballots in-house. Butler, Clinton, Defiance, Fulton, Henry, Lucas, Mahoning, Miami, and Williams counties.
Last week, a scathing report in the The New York Times was critical of Midwest Direct for its delay in processing absentee ballots for this year's election and for prominently flying a "Trump 2020" flag outside of their building.
In a text to 3News' Lynna Lai on Saturday, Gebbie stated that the company had decided to no longer fly the "Trump 2020" flag.
"As far as the flag is concerned, Jim (co-owner James Gebbie) and I flew the political flag because it's our freedom to support a candidate, as is true for every American. We have since decided to fly only the American flag at Midwest," Richard Gebbie wrote in the text.
In his statement on Tuesday, Gebbie addressed allegations that his company held or produced ballots for just one political party or the other.
“For the 10 years we’ve been producing ballots, Midwest has never held or prioritized ballot printing for any reason. This year, we processed every ballot without regard to party, geography or county, as we always do. Any suggestion that our personal political beliefs prompted us to slow down ballot production and distribution is absolutely false. Quite simply, we wouldn’t be in business if we conducted business that way. We know how important this election is to everyone in our country and we have kept our pledge to do everything our company can to make sure the mail-in ballot process proceeds expediently and with integrity," Gebbie stated.
According to Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, as of the first week of early voting and absentee voting, there have been close to 2.5 million absentee ballots requested. In 2016 at that same point, it was just over 1.24 million. "So we've seen a doubling in absentee voting activity and that's a great thing," LaRose said to a group of journalists on Monday.
“It is fair to say today that no one – not the various boards of elections, not Ohio’s Secretary of State, not our company – anticipated the staggering volume of mail-in ballot requests that has actually occurred,” Midwest Direct said in a statement following the story in The Times.
