Secretary of State Frank LaRose likes to say that “it’s easy to vote, hard to cheat” in Ohio elections. But his recent — and not-so-recent — behavior seems to contradict both halves of that formula, a watchdog says.
Just two months before the presidential election, the state’s top election official continues to change the rules in ways that make it harder for some Ohioans — especially up-to-date citizens and the disabled — to vote. In the meantime, he’s supposed to be running elections neutrally, but the things he’s done about the state’s extreme partisan gerrymandering are clearly biased in favor of his own party and his friends, the watchdog said.
LaRose issued an order Friday that effectively banned every one of the already confined group of people who can get a disabled person’s ballot into the ballot box will not do so. It now requires those providing assistance to go to an election commission during open hours and sign a waiver that they are dropping off a ballot.
LaRose also sent a letter to legislative leaders urging them to eliminate inboxes altogetherHe said it was intended to prevent a practice known as “vote harvesting” — when someone delivers votes on behalf of others.
LaRose and several other Republicans have claimed without evidence that it is susceptible to widespread fraud. Reuters fact check 2022 election no such evidence was founddespite the claims that have been made to this effect.
The secretary of state, whose office did not respond to questions, also claims without evidence that noncitizen voting is a massive problem and recently completed an audit that indicated possible noncitizen voting. On Wednesday, the Capital Journal reported that at least two up-to-date citizens who were flagged later received letters suggesting the state’s strict voter ID law was stricter than it actually is.
LaRose also carried out an aggressive purging of voter registrations that critics say disproportionately affect communities of color.
The Secretary of State has made much of the potential for fraud involving ballot harvesting, out-of-state voting, and other methods, but has never provided any evidence that this isn’t the case. extremely uncommonindependent experts say. Indeed, despite his protests and investigations, LaRose’s hundreds of referrals of suspected voter fraud last year led to only one criminal chargeThis comes after four years of elections in a state with 8 million registered voters.
To justify taking down the inboxes, LaRose — again without evidence — accused League of Women Voters trying to make it easier for people to cheat in Ohio elections.
The 104-year-old, nonpartisan league was founded by suffragettes when women gained the right to vote, and it encourages participation, access to voting, and fair elections. The league led a federal court to overturn part of a voting restriction law passed last year by Ohio Republicans when it ruled that the law illegally restricted the voting rights of people with disabilities.
LaRose wrote a letter urging lawmakers to eliminate the boxes in response to the ruling. The letter suggests that disabled Ohioans cannot be trusted to vote for themselves and that family members should have the right to supervise them.
“Unfortunately, this decision will not provide relief to a family who believes their disabled relative is receiving assistance to vote without their knowledge, consent or participation, or has been coerced or misled by individuals attempting to ‘help’ them make voting decisions,” the secretary of state wrote.
Then LaRose — supporter of former President Donald Trump — accused the League of Women Voters of seeking to exploit disabled voters to steal the election.
“I suspect this is exactly the outcome LWV intended,” he wrote. “Under the guise of helping the disabled, their legal strategy is to make Ohio elections less secure and more susceptible to fraud, especially with respect to the use of drop boxes. The security of mail-in ballot delivery remains a priority, so we are left with the obvious question of a remedy.”
Catherine Turcer, executive director of the nonprofit Common Cause Ohio, said she was stunned that LaRose wanted to restrict voting for people with disabilities in Ohio.
“It’s really shocking that the secretary of state wants to make it harder for disabled people to count their votes,” she said. “The secretary of state is the chief electoral officer. Many of us walk. We’re able-bodied and we can vote, no problem. But there, by the grace of God, I am. Any one of us could become disabled at any time and want to cast a ballot, and not necessarily have a relative who could take it to the polling station.”
Turcer said the goal seems clear.
“It just makes sense to expand who can pick up ballots for people who are having trouble,” she said. “There’s no reason to make it harder for the people who are delivering those ballots. It just doesn’t make sense — unless you’re trying to encourage Ohioans to challenge their ballot drop boxes, unless the registrar actually wants to make it harder to vote.”
While his latest moves undermine LaRose’s claims that he wants to make it easier to vote in Ohio, he has once again committed an act that has left himself open to accusations from regulators and advocates of election fraud in Ohio — despite his previous claims that he is trying to make it harder.
In the past decade, Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved two amendments aimed at curbing extreme partisan gerrymandering. LaRose and Ohio GOP gerrymandering leaders were part of a redistricting commission that ignored seven bipartisan rulings by the Ohio Supreme Court that the maps they prepared violated these amendments.
Maureen O’Connor, the Republican chief justice who ruled with a bipartisan majority that the maps drawn by the GOP-led commission were unconstitutional, was forced to retire because of her age in 2022. She has since helped lead a group working to pass what she sees as a sure-fire anti-gerrymandering amendment that will go to voters in November.
Supporters of the amendment have collected more than 535,000 valid signatures from Ohio voters. to put it on the ballot. But then LaRose led the Voting Board in August approving the summary written by LaRose this will also appear on the ballot, which will vote in a way that is almost the opposite of what the amendment proposes.
The document states that the amendment “would repeal constitutional protections against gerrymandering approved by nearly three-quarters of Ohio’s electors in the 2015 and 2018 state elections and eliminate the long-standing ability of Ohioans to hold their representatives accountable for drawing fair districts for state legislatures and congressional elections.”
Never mind that the constitutional amendments up for repeal were the same ones LaRose and his Redistricting Commission colleagues have ignored seven times since the 2020 census was completed. Never mind that when legislators draw districts with predetermined results that give them supermajority control over legislative chambers that don’t reflect the preferences of statewide voters — also known as gerrymandering — that’s what eliminates “the ability of Ohioans to hold their representatives accountable.”
The second paragraph of the 900-word “summary” contains similarly charged language, claiming that the anti-gerrymandering amendment will cause gerrymandering.
The election commission’s brief said the amendment “creates a new, taxpayer-funded nominating commission to gerrymander legislative and congressional district boundaries to favor Ohio’s two largest political parties, consistent with a pattern based on partisan results as the dominant factor.”
Outraged anti-gerrymandering advocates are suing. They are also working to tell voters that if they agree with their approach to stopping gerrymandering, they should vote “yes” on Issue 1.
LaRose made a similar plan last year when allowed abortion opponents to support write the voting summary in favor of the abortion rights amendment. Despite the confusing language on the ballot, the amendment won by 14 points.
LaRose said he wants to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat in Ohio’s elections.
Yet over the past year, the secretary of state has taken numerous steps to restrict voting access, questioned the eligibility of people with disabilities to vote, accused the League of Women Voters of trying to steal the election, and twice manipulated the wording of citizen amendments he didn’t like.
Turcer of Common Cause said LaRose engaged in precinct gerrymandering and used his neutral position as Ohio’s elections administrator to engage in partisan behavior.
“It’s clear that Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose was on the redistricting commission,” she said. “He repeatedly gerrymandered the boundaries of the electoral districts, manipulating them to benefit his own political party and to advance the careers of his friends. And then when he had the opportunity to serve as head of the Ohio Ballot Board, instead of remaining neutral, he engaged in creating language that is essentially Orwellian. So the secretary of state is a gerrymanderer who then manipulated the language of the ballot to make it nonsensical, erroneous and clearly, clearly partisan.”
