Ohio said Monday that it would move to postpone its presidential primary, becoming the first of four states that had been scheduled to vote on Tuesday to try to push back its election because of worries about the coronavirus.
The state’s governor, Mike DeWine, said that he did not have the authority to unilaterally delay the primary and that a lawsuit would be filed to delay the election. The new date that state officials are seeking is June 2, and absentee voting will continue until then, Mr. DeWine said at a news conference.
“We don’t know who coming through the line has been infected,” he said. “We should not force people to make this choice, a choice between their health and their constitutional rights and their duties as American citizens.”
The move came after elections officials in Louisiana and then Georgia said they would postpone their upcoming primary elections in response to the outbreak. On Friday, Louisiana announced that its April 4 election would be pushed back by more than two months, to June 20; Georgia followed suit a day later, saying it would push back its March 24 contest to May 19.
Ohio elections officials had scheduled a news conference on Monday morning to discuss additional safety precautions they were taking, but abruptly called it off before making the announcement about the postponement.
The four states originally scheduled to vote Tuesday — Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio — had all previously indicated that they planned to move forward with their elections with additional precautions in place, saying in a joint statement on Friday that they were confident that ballots could be safely cast. Their plans have included making hand sanitizer available at polling places and sanitizing voting equipment to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
But at least in Ohio, that confidence had apparently waned by Monday. Mr. DeWine said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation on Sunday against gatherings of more than 50 people meant that the state could not hold its election and comply.
The about-face by Ohio officials added yet another logistical speed bump to a presidential primary that has already been upended by concerns that voting could worsen a public health crisis.
Several other states have said they were changing or considering making changes to their voting processes and procedures in response to the outbreak. Wyoming suspended the in-person portion of its Democratic caucuses, allowing residents to either vote by mail or drop off their ballots at a county polling location instead. Elections officials in Connecticut, Maryland and Pennsylvania said they were considering various ways to encourage voting by mail.
Postponements are highly unusual in American political campaigns, but not entirely unprecedented. States have broad autonomy to shape various aspects of their primary elections, including determining their the timing.
But rules set by the Democratic Party dictate that all primary elections be completed by June 9, meaning that states like Louisiana that push their contests beyond that date could be penalized with a reduction in their delegate count.
Matt Stevens contributed reporting.