In his hunt for unproven widespread voter fraud, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has accused district attorneys of deliberately ignoring his reports of possible election manipulation. Law enforcement officials, on the other hand, are offended by his “baseless attack,” explaining that the secretary’s “cases” of fraud have no basis.
The Republican Party secretary, despite claiming Ohio is the “gold standard” for elections, blames county officials for failing to prosecute alleged fraud.
According to Lou Tobin of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association, fraud is not common, which is why there are not many convictions.
“When the prosecutor started looking into it, it turned out there was nothing there,” Tobin said.
Still, LaRose’s team complained in a letter to Attorney General Dave Yost that prosecutors had failed to address allegations of voter fraud.
“It was an attack on prosecutors,” Tobin said.
Since 2019, the Clerk’s Office has referred 633 people to law enforcement for potential violations. Of those, only 12 people have been charged. Cuyahoga County has recorded two of those successful prosecutions.
In 2023 Shaker Heights Trump Supporter who voted in both Ohio and Florida were sentenced to three years in prison.
That same year, an independent senior voter from Westlake was charged with voting in Ohio and Arizona. He pleaded guilty in 2024 and was fined $1,000.
Atiba Ellis, a professor of election law at Case Western Reserve University, echoed LaRose’s view.
“Law enforcement is not doing its job, so any voter fraud that ‘must exist’ goes unnoticed,” Ellis said.
In a letter sent Tuesday by Hun Yi, LaRose’s director of investigations, Yost said that “many of these reports have not been followed up on by law enforcement.”
“We respect prosecutors’ discretion and did not expect all 633 reports to result in criminal charges, but only 12 of the 633 indicate that a second set of eyes is needed to determine whether prosecution of these crimes is warranted,” said Hun Yi, LaRose’s director of investigations.
In a press release the same day, LaRose said the cases were not pursued “sometimes by choice and other times due to limited prosecutorial resources.”
He also sent Yost a list of possible violations. We have requested and are waiting for a reference document for the alleged fraud.
Most district attorneys we contacted were busy with court hearings Friday, but Andrew Rogalski, head of the Cuyahoga County District Attorney’s Office’s Economic Crimes Unit, sat down to explain why LaRose will not be sentenced to the expected sentences.
“I don’t know of a single case where we received a referral and simply did nothing with it,” Rogalski said.
Many of the cases LaRose mentions about his team involve people who likely voted twice.
“The initiation of the prosecution was groundless as the investigation showed that in fact another person voted,” the official said.
Other prosecution teams have contacted us to share the same sentiments.
In a letter to AG Yi wrote that non-citizens could register and violate electoral law. Rogalski investigated the matter.
“In each case, the form in which [noncitizens] “Used to register, they didn’t lie,” he shared. “They checked the box that said they were not citizens.”
Before LaRose’s team referred the case to Cuyahuga, they sent the individual a form informing him that he had been improperly registered and that he should fill out this form to cancel his registration.
“In almost every case, the foreigner filled out this form and his registration was canceled,” Rogalski said.
He added that there was no need to further consider the cases of people who withdrew their registration form due to “lack of criminal intent”.
Prosecutors can’t pursue baseless cases, Tobin said.
“There is only a minimal amount of evidence that would support an indictment or conviction,” Tobin said. “The rest are simply things that would not justify criminal prosecution.”
Yost’s legal team responded in a letter Thursday that it could not investigate the case. His office can only investigate alleged election fraud, not voter registration fraud, which is the “overwhelming majority” of reports.
As Ellis explained, voter registration fraud happens when someone makes a mistake on their application.
“Voter error, yes, creates regulatory problems, but it does not amount to a massive conspiracy to commit voter fraud,” the professor said.
Yost’s team wrote that the only way to get involved is for lawmakers to change state law.
Ellis is concerned that unnecessary police action could lead to disruptions in voting.
“Prosecuting voters for fraud that doesn’t happen sounds like a way to intimidate people,” he said.
It wouldn’t be the first time LaRose has been accused of trying to subvert the will of voters.
Just last year LaRose tried eliminate inboxes After Ohioans with disabilities gained better access to voting, things changed dramatically amendment concerning the reapportionment of electoral districts summary language (one that would take power away from politiciansincluding his, and return them to the citizens) in a move that both Democrats and Republicans have deemed unethical and that was the face of a campaign to eliminate majority rule in the state (Issue 1 of August 2023, which aimed to make it harder for citizens to change the Constitution and was also a direct result of amendment regarding access to abortion (creation of ballot paper).
For Ellis, this is frustrating to watch.
“This is a problem invented by people who don’t trust voters and that’s why they want to go after them,” he said.
He said it’s also a political blame game. Since the evidence doesn’t support evidence of voter fraud, accuse people of not doing their jobs to “explain it,” he added.
Cuyahoga County officials, while maintaining a great relationship with the attorney general’s office, say it’s probably the largest prosecutor’s office in the state and can handle any case that comes its way — or knows how to ask for facilitate when it needs it.
“The Cuyahoga County District Attorney’s Office is fully resourced and fully committed to prosecuting all crimes committed in the state of Ohio in Cuyahoga County,” Rogalski said. “I wouldn’t change a thing about that.”
Tobin agreed, saying prosecutors take their jobs seriously. LaRose is undermining them by calling on Yost and possibly state lawmakers, he said.
“If the secretary of state wants prosecutors to take on more of his cases, he would be better off investigating the scenarios he finds and sending us better cases rather than attacking prosecutors,” Tobin said.
And to be clear, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Ohio.
Even without taking into account elections in odd years, meaning only presidential and gubernatorial years, plus a special election in August 2023, more than 23 million people have voted from 2020 to now. Even if there were 633 genuine allegations of fraud that prosecutors say there aren’t, that would be 0.0026%.
If prosecutors are to be trusted, the fraud rate would be 0.00005%, which shows that this is not a widespread problem.
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“This article was originally published on News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content-sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ stories, it is not available for free republication by other news outlets because it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland.
