COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio will offer curbside voting on Election Day and loosened absentee voting rules for those unexpectedly hospitalized or quarantined due to coronavirus, under a new order issued from Secretary of State Frank LaRose.

In a written directive issued to county boards of elections Sunday, less than 48 hours from the Tuesday presidential primary election, LaRose instructed elections officials to make changes in two areas. The changes further upend the March 17 election since Ohio saw its first three confirmed COVID-19 cases last Monday.

UPDATE: Later Monday, Ohio officials announced they would move to postpone Tuesday’s election.

The outbreak has led to hundreds of poll-worker cancellations and last-minute relocations of polling places that had been in nursing homes, with some of the new locations in Cuyahoga County not being finalized until Friday.

LaRose in a Saturday directive also laid out to county elections workers how to help nursing home residents who had been planning to vote in their building vote elsewhere, particularly in light of an order from Gov. Mike DeWine to bar visitors to nursing homes to try to protect the residents’ health. The directive says some nursing homes have barred elections workers from entering, even though they’re supposed to be allowed in if they’re helping residents vote.

All the changes could contribute to long lines on Election Day, which has led officials to also emphasize early or mail-in voting.

Georgia, which was to have voted March 24, and Louisiana, which was to have voted April 4, have postponed their presidential primary elections until May and June, respectively.

But the March 17 states — Ohio Arizona, Florida and Illinois — all have continued with their elections despite rapidly expanding restrictions on public life, particularly in Ohio, where Gov. Mike DeWine on Sunday ordered all state bars and restaurants, with exceptions for delivery or carryout, to be closed indefinitely.

Meanwhile, elections advocates including the League of Women Voters of Ohio have pushed for the state to further relax voting laws in response to the crisis, including allowing voters to designate anyone, including nursing-home staff, to deliver completed ballots, and to allow them to be delivered to any polling place, and not just county elections board early-voting centers.

The new changes are:

Curbside voting

Boards of elections are to offer curbside voting to “any voter that is concerned about coming inside a polling location and sends another person into the polling location to inform precinct election officials of their desire to vote,” the directive reads.

The process likely will add to the average time it takes to cast a vote.

Elections workers would then essentially re-create the process of checking in at a table inside a precinct, according to the directive. They would check the poll book, send out workers of two different political parties to collect a voter’s signature and examine their ID, head back inside, get a ballot, give it to the voter, collect it when the voter is done and then place it into a ballot container inside.

New absentee ballot rules

The directive also lays out new absentee voting rules for those quarantined or hospitalized “in the context of the ongoing public health emergency.”

Normally, Ohio voters must have submitted an application for an absentee ballot by last Saturday at noon.

But for voters “unforeseeably confined due to concerns regarding Coronavirus/COVID-19 or are hospitalized,” boards of elections must accept absentee ballot applications received by 3 p.m. on Election Day.

It also says a pair of elections workers, one from each party, may collect and deliver absentee ballots “to an absentee voter who is hospitalized or whose minor child is hospitalized within the county.” A family member may also deliver the ballot.

Along with Ohio Health Department Director Dr. Amy Acton, LaRose was set to give a news briefing in Columbus Monday morning to share “additional precautions being implemented in order to enhance the safety of Ohio voters on election day.”

But shortly before it was to have begun, the briefing was postponed until 2 p.m., when DeWine also will offer a daily coronavirus briefing.

This breaking post will be updated.

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The directives: