Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose said he suspects some canvassers who circulated voter petitions and registrations for this fall‘s ballot might be guilty of election law violations. And the Republican Secretary of State has handed referrals for violations to prosecutors in 20 counties.
LaRose said he suspects canvassers with Black Fork Strategies LLC may have broken laws as they worked on campaigns to get minor party status recognition or put the Citizens Not Politicians amendment to change redistricting on the November ballot. And LaRose said his office’s Election Integrity Unit also found possibly fraudulent voter registration forms.
“When they see patterns of what appears to be fraudulent signings, maybe an activity by the circulator that appears as though they have been forging signatures, things that are just out of the ordinary. It’s one thing to find that somebody just got their address wrong or an old address and they have since moved, what have you – the human error kind of things,” LaRose said. “What we are talking about it is appears to our boards of elections to be intentional wrongdoing and attempting to defraud the signature-gathering process.”
LaRose said it is up to prosecutors in 20 counties to bring charges against those responsible for possible wrongdoing.
“When a law’s not enforced, it’s not a law. It’s just a suggestion. And my job and solemn duty as chief elections officer is to make sure the law is enforced,” LaRose said.
LaRose said whatever happens, this will not keep the redistricting issue or any party candidates off the ballot.
In 2022, LaRose created the Election Public Integrity Division to deal with voter fraud, which he has acknowledged is extremely rare. He recently added three new positions to that unit to investigate election irregularities.
Last year LaRose also took Ohio out of the multi-state Electronic Registration Information Center that was designed to help states share voter registration information. He said in a letter that those who run the database have ignored calls for reform to encourage confidence in its performance, and that instead it’s made moves “which have only resulted in the transformation of a previously bipartisan organization to one that appears to favor only the interests of one political party." But the month before he withdrew Ohio from ERIC, LaRose called it “one of the best fraud-fighting tools that we have when it comes to actually catching people that try to vote in multiple states.”
A total of nine Republican-led states have left ERIC, all after claims from the far right that it’s bankrolled by progressive billionaire George Soros to help Democrats. Ohio has signed since an agreement with Florida, Tennessee and West Virginia to share data to check voter registrations.
NEW INFORMATION ON THIS STORY (Story updated at 11:45 A.M., Tuesdsay, August 13, 2024)
Statement from Black Fork Strategies LLC says the company is not being charged with any wrongdoing.
A spokesman with the Ohio Secretary of State's office confirms the company is not facing wrongdoing but some of the circulators working on its behalf are being referred for prosecution.
