Ohio Secretary of State Frank Larose mingles before the 2024 State of the State address in the Ohio House chambers at the Ohio Statehouse. (Pool photo by Barbara J. Perenic, Columbus Dispatch.)
Ohio elections chief last year allowed the group to manipulate ballot language
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has provided an announcement on election integrity “exclusively” to anti-abortion Ohio Right to Life, the group said in a Monday press release. It contains a link to a YouTube video in which LaRose talks about how Ohio elections are safe because the nuts and bolts of the process are overseen at the local level by officials from both parties.
LaRose’s office didn’t respond to questions for this story.
In the video, the secretary of state repeated his saying that in Ohio, “it’s easy to vote and hard to cheat.” And he lays out several reasons why it’s hard at least for voters themselves to cheat.
LaRose explains that county boards of election are each run by two Republicans and two Democrats and that voting machines are “airlocked,” meaning they’re never connected to the internet and thus not vulnerable to hacking. LaRose added that even access to the machines has to be on a bipartisan basis.
“The voting machines are under bipartisan surveillance and they’re kept in a storage system with dual locks and keys that require a Republican key to open the door and a Democratic key to make sure that both parties are present,” he said.
LaRos later added, “We take election integrity seriously here in Ohio.”
As of last year, LaRose had forwarded 521 cases of possible noncitizen voting for prosecution over five years. That resulted in just one prosecution for voter fraud.
In addition, in the video he recorded for Right to Life, LaRose said that audits comparing electronic vote results to paper backups have been correct more than 99.9% of the time since he took office at the beginning of 2019.
Despite the lack of a statistical case that there’s a problem, LaRose has taken aggressive steps that he says will protect election integrity.
For example, he’s purged hundreds of thousands of Ohioans from the registration rolls. Many were eligible voters who were purged for not voting in recent cycles even though critics point out that there’s no constitutional basis to argue that just because a citizen hasn’t voted in some past elections he or she is ineligible.
A progressive watchdog group, Dēmos, found that LaRose’s office has some of the worst practices for ensuring that eligible voters aren’t improperly purged from the Ohio rolls. And civil rights advocates say Ohio’s purges disproportionately target voters of color, who tend not to vote for the GOP, LaRose’s party.
On the issue of citizen-proposed constitutional amendments, as chair of the Ohio Ballot Board, LaRose has significant control over the description of an amendment that appears on the ballot — in other words, what voters read when they enter the voting booth.
He’s under intense fire this year for the language he used to describe the Issue 1 amendment aimed at removing elected officials from the process of drawing maps of Ohio’s legislative and congressional districts in favor of a citizens commission.
In 2021 and 2022, LaRose and the other Republicans on the Ohio Redistricting Commission ignored seven bipartisan rulings by the Ohio Supreme Court that said the maps they drew violated earlier anti-gerrymandering amendments that were passed by huge majorities of Ohioans.
The proposed amendment that will appear on the November 2024 ballot is meant to be more water-tight than the earlier ones by removing politicians from the process, replacing them with citizens, and retaining a ban on partisan gerrymandering. But LaRose wrote ballot language that opponents say is intended to sway voters against the amendment, which LaRose publicly opposes.
Marty Schladen has been a reporter for decades, working in Indiana, Texas and other places before returning to his native Ohio to work at The Columbus Dispatch in 2017. He’s won state and national journalism awards for investigations into utility regulation, public corruption, the environment, prescription drug spending and other matters.
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has struck a deal to share voter data with three other Republican-led states. The agreement comes roughly six months after LaRose chose to exit a much larger, bipartisan interstate compact known as ERIC.
Ohio’s new agreements give the state access to interstate voter information on its own terms. When LaRose announced Ohio was backing out of the compact, he praised that “a al carte” model.
But even with three new partner states, Ohio will get a lot less of that information than it got from ERIC.
LaRose’s new deal
Under the agreements, Ohio will share voter data with elections officials in Florida, Virginia and West Virginia. Those states in turn will give Ohio access to their voter rolls. However, LaRose’s announcement offers scant details about scope and terms of the agreements.
In a press release, LaRose touted “state-specific data sharing and security protocols.”
“Ohio took the lead on this election integrity project,” LaRose said, “and it’s only one aspect of the work we’re doing to keep our elections honest as we prepare for the next presidential election year.”
Unlike the previous the data sharing system, LaRose inked three separate agreements with each individual state. The secretary said the data will allow both states to identify cross state voter fraud and duplicate registrations. Ohio Capital Journal has requested those agreements, but they were not immediately made available.
Amanda Grandjean, a deputy assistant and senior advisor in LaRose’s office, said they anticipate additional agreements with other states.
“These new agreements came from a 27-state working group that formed earlier this year in hopes of finding a more durable and accountable solution to cross-state data sharing that fit each state’s individual needs,” Grandjean said.
Grandjean led negotiations on the three existing deals. She expressed confidence more will follow as states address “legal and cybersecurity protocols.”
The deal they left behind
Previously, Ohio was part of ERIC, the Electronic Registration Information Center. State elections officials lead the organization, and it pools voter data from member states. Using that combined database and information from federal sources, ERIC helped members maintain accurate voter rolls.
It also enabled them to identify voters illegally casting ballots in different states for the same election. Last October, for instance, LaRose touted finding 75 incidents of alleged multi-state voter fraud.
As part of ERIC’s efforts, though, member states had to encourage eligible but unregistered voters to register. In his letter to ERIC announcing Ohio’s decision to pull out, LaRose alluded to those requirements.
Conservative media seized on those demands, describing them as “a left-wing voter registration drive.” ERIC member states fall all along the spectrum of conservative to liberal. Two of the most left-leaning states in the country, California and New York, have never joined.
Since 2022, eight states, all of them Republican-led, have left ERIC. Texas’ resignation from the organization will take effect in October. After that, the organization will include 24 states and the District of Columbia.
At a panel on election policy last month hosted by the National Conference of State Legislatures, even one of the conservative leaning panelists criticized the exodus. Matt Germer from the R Street Institute argued conservative states should reform ERIC rather than leave.
“Instead, what we’ve seen are a number of states throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”
But in LaRose’s announcement of his office’s new agreements, he took a parting shot at the organization.
“This is a major new development,” LaRose insisted, “as states look to move beyond the old model of sharing voter data through an unaccountable third-party vendor.”
Nick Evans has spent the past seven years reporting for NPR member stations in Florida and Ohio. He got his start in Tallahassee, covering issues like redistricting, same sex marriage and medical marijuana. Since arriving in Columbus in 2018, he has covered everything from city council to football. His work on Ohio politics and local policing have been featured numerous times on NPR.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed House Bill 458 on Jan. 6, enacting what’s been called one of the most restrictive voter-ID laws in the country.
Public records obtained by the Ohio Capital Journal show how the law moved through the process, with lawmakers often ignoring moderation suggestions proposed by the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office and a law firm that lobbied on the law.
Taking elements from two election bills previously introduced in the Statehouse — House Bill 294, and Senate Bill 320 — House Bill 458 instituted sweeping changes to how elections are administered in Ohio.
Alterations include mandating the use of photo IDs, passports, or driver’s licenses to vote, and limiting counties to one ballot drop box. The law also mandated citizenship status on IDs and excludes county-issued veterans’ identification and college IDs from the list one can use to vote.
Such restrictions received significant backlash, with Democratic law firm the Elias Law Group filing a lawsuit the day the law was passed.
Regardless, Ohio’s Republican leaders insist the new voting restrictions were necessary, despite no evidence of significant voter fraud, by impersonation or otherwise. Total possible voter fraud in the 2020 election was a microscopic 0.0005%.
Nevertheless, DeWine said the new restrictions were needed to combat concerns about voter fraud, which have been pushed politically by his own party without evidence.
“Election integrity is a significant concern to Americans on both sides of the aisle across the country,” DeWine claimed in a statement.
DeWine also touted what he sees as moderation of the law’s voting restrictions, congratulating the general assembly for “working with my Administration on changes to House Bill 458 to ensure that more restrictive proposals were not included in the final bill.”
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s Press Secretary Rob Nichols similarly touted the DeWine administration’s involvement in the process.
“While no legislation is ever perfect, the House and Senate leaders listened to many of our concerns and made some improvements to the bill,” Nichols wrote in an email responding to OCJ when asked the extent of SOS’s work on election reform. “Overall, the legislature approved some much-needed reforms that will benefit both voters and elections officials, while continuing to make Ohio one of the most honest and accessible voting states in the nation.”
But documents obtained by the Ohio Capital Journal through a public records request reveal a complex web of bureaucrats, lawmakers, lobbyists, and outside powerbrokers, united in their efforts to pass the new voting restrictions, including the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office.
Records show that the Secretary of State’s Office supported most of the House GOP’s voting restrictions, haggling out various details. In some cases where the office pushed for more moderation, their recommendations were not followed by lawmakers.
Regardless, LaRose has been publicly supportive of the law as passed.
Ohio Secretary of State input
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose. Official photo.
On Dec. 9, 2022, Frank LaRose’s Chief of Staff Jason Mauk submitted a memo to Senate GOP legal Counsel Frank Strigari, outlining the secretary’s issues with HB 458.
Since Dewine signed the law, military families have voiced opposition to it, saying the mail-in ballot rules curtail the ability of service members to vote.
Mauk appears to have foreseen the blowback that the law’s rigid deadline for mail-in ballots would cause, especially among the armed services, and warned against it.
Mauk asked the Senate to “allow for ballots to be returned by the postal service for at least five days after election day.”
Eventually, lawmakers settled on a four-day cutoff.
Asked if his colleagues in the secretary’s office were concerned that the four day cutoff — below the deadline recommended by Mauk — might endanger voters, press secretary Rob Nichols indicated it could have been worse.
“They wanted zero,” Nichols said. “We said that might disenfranchise voters, asked for at least a five day return deadline, and they cut it down to four.”
Asked again if the four-day cutoff would harm voters, Nichols replied, “We enforce the laws; we don’t make them.”
Asked for comment, Ohio House Republican Majority Leader Bill Seitz responded in an email, “I do not think there will be any impact on service members being disenfranchised by our new law.”
In communications, Mauk from the Secretary of State’s Office also argued counties should be allowed to have multiple ballot drop boxes on site, writing they “respectfully ask the Senate to allow up to three drop boxes on board office property.”
He also fought against immediate disclosure of drop box surveillance.
“This office has serious concerns about the burden placed on the county boards of elections in requiring immediate disclosure of drop-box video surveillance records,” Mauk wrote. “The immediacy of this requirement is problematic.”
Nevertheless, the provision remained in the final bill and drop boxes were limited to one.
Likewise, Mauk recommended creating a “secure, electronic method of verifying voter registration data,” using information from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
One of the benefits from this system, Mauk claimed, is that it could deter non-citizens from voting.
“It also helps to ensure non-citizens are not able to submit a voter registration accidentally, or intentionally,” he wrote.
Another aspect of the election law process made clear by the records is the involvement of the Columbus law firm Byers, Minton & Associates.
Byers Minton is one of Ohio’s largest lobbying firms, with clientele ranging from Apple to the Cleveland Browns, and the Girl Scouts. Byers Minton’s public position on election reform is rarely mentioned on its website, social media, or other communications.
The firm’s weekly update on events at the Statehouse failed to mention HB 458, instead prioritizing DeWine signing a spending bill. The election bills are referenced once, at the bottom of a list including everything passed by the Statehouse during its lame duck session.
But behind the scenes, records show an apparently close relationship between Byers Minton’s lawyers and the lawmakers producing the election legislation.
Founder Bill Byers was involved at the earliest stages of the eventual law’s development. Records show Byers helped arrange favorable testimony, though some of his suggestions for election law changes, such as automated voter registration, were not followed by lawmakers.
Republican Ohio House Majority Leader Bill Seitz. Official photo.
For the original bill, House Bill 294, Byers helped arrange witness testimony from former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson to speak on its behalf.
Byers would also be included in a thread on the final draft of HB 294 from Oct. 5 of last year, featuring multiple revisions.
Asked about this, another legislative aide for Seitz said Byers’ actions were within the purview of Byers Minton’s regular duties.
“Bill Byers lobbied on behalf of the Secure Elections Project,” wrote the legislative aide in a response email to OCJ. “Byers simply offered valuable input on the bill on behalf of his client.”
Byer’s interest in election law would later extend to SB 320, the other predecessor bill to the one that was eventually passed, which was introduced by Republican state Sen. Teresa Gavarone.
In it, Byers argues for the cost-saving potential of automated voter registration and verification, and the wastefulness of provisional ballots.
“Processing provisional ballots imposes significant costs on county election officials,” Byers said.
Byers also portrayed decreasing the amount of provisional ballots as a financial windfall.
“Reducing the number of provisional ballots cast in the 2016 and 2018 election cycles, would have resulted in an additional $830,721 in savings to county BOEs,” Byes said.
According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Election Lab, 1.7 million provisional ballots were counted in 2016 nationally, and accounted for 1.2% of all votes in the 2018 midterm election.
“Thank you!,” the aid replied to Byers.
Six days later, the aide emailed Byers once more, saying Gavarone “would like to meet with you to get more Info,” and requested “Frank(LaRose)’s attendance during that meeting with us.”
Asked to discuss the details of these meetings, no one from Gavarone’s offices responded.
As for Byers Minton, asked for comment, Andrew Minton replied, “My firm does not give comment to the press on any issue or for any reason.”
Speaking about the election reform bills as a whole, Mallory was livid when asked for comment.
“These anti voter policy changes are not about improving the election process, it’s about erecting barriers and decreasing access,” Mallory said. “What we have is a super majority rushing anti voter bills through a lame duck session. They are perpetuating a fraud on Ohio voters and the democratic process, with the false narrative of Election security and modernization. It is disingenuous.”
