Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has tapped leadership for the new Ohio Election Integrity Commission. As part of last summer’s budget, state lawmakers axed the state’s existing independent campaign watchdog and replaced it with a new office under the secretary’s control.
As of Jan. 1, the Ohio Elections Commission hands the reins to the Ohio Election Integrity Commission. The board’s membership shrinks from seven to five, and instead of a bipartisan panel selecting a nonpartisan colleague, all commissioners will be chosen by state leaders.
To start, former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Terrence O’Donnell will lead the commission on an interim basis, after which former U.S. Attorney D. Michael Crites will take over. Crites previously chaired the Ohio Elections Commission after getting appointed to the panel by Gov. Jon Kasich.
Under existing law, Crites couldn’t serve on the new commission immediately because he’s already part of a different state board. Gov. Mike DeWine signed legislation lifting that restriction in December, but it won’t take effect until March.
“Justice O’Donnell is one of the most respected jurists and legal minds in Ohio,” LaRose said in a statement, “and I’m honored that he’s agreed to give of his time in retirement to continue serving our state in this interim capacity.”
“His experience will help immediately restore the commission’s credibility,” he added, “as he leads its formative days.”
How we got here
At root, state lawmakers criticized the Ohio Elections Commission for moving too slowly. Even frivolous allegations, they complained, drag on for months if not years, placing demands on candidates’ time and creating fodder for their political opponents. For all that time and energy invested, eventual punishments often seemed meager in comparison.
Meanwhile, the commission was just as slow to address significant, well-known examples of campaign finance violations like former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder’s activity to advance Ohio House Bill 6.
“I mean, they’ve had an OEC complaint pending against Larry Householder for five years,” state Rep. Brian Stewart, R-Ashville, said back in April as he led the charge to eliminate the agency.
In November, the commission again delayed taking action on those complaints.
“This dereliction of duty has potentially allowed criminal behavior to go unpunished,” LaRose said at the time, “and it sends a disgraceful message to Ohio’s citizenry that the enforcement of our election laws is feckless and toothless.”
When the commission handed down a $400 fine in December, LaRose dismissed it as “another weak slap on the wrist,” adding “time’s up, OEC. Good riddance.”
The new commission
Majority and minority leaders in the Ohio General Assembly are responsible for selecting members of the new Ohio Elections Integrity Commission and the Secretary of State taps the chair.
Ohio Senate President Rob McColley selected Karl Kerschner, an attorney who began serving on the Ohio Elections Commission in 2024. Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio nominated Eben “Sandy” McNair, an attorney who previously served on the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.
House Minority Leader Dani Isaacsohn designated John Lyall, another member currently serving on the Ohio Elections Commission, to continue on the new commission. House Speaker Matt Huffman has not yet selected his designee.
Interim chairman O’Donnell said he was “honored” for the opportunity to serve on the commission.
“I would hope to instill public confidence in Ohio elections,” he said, “to ensure compliance with campaign finance laws, and to work with my colleagues on the commission to achieve those goals.”
O’Donnell first joined the bench in 1980 on the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas. He went on to serve on the state appeals court before getting appointed to the Ohio Supreme Court in 2003. He won elections to continue serving on the supreme court three times before retiring in 2018.
Ohio Capital Journal reached out to Crites, who’ll take over the chairmanship in March, but got no reply. In addition to his experience as a federal prosecutor and former chair of the Ohio Elections Commission, the secretary described him as a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and Vietnam War veteran who reached the rank of Captain before retiring from the U.S. Navy. Crites currently chairs the Ohio Veterans Hall of Fame executive committee.
Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.
Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association Executive Director Lou Tobin called LaRose’s actions an attack on prosecutors.
With the U.S. Department of Justice referral, LaRose is again going back to the well, touting an administration “that has expressed an interest in actively reviewing and potentially prosecuting” election crimes.
Yost and Tobin declined to comment for this story, but a measure in the Ohio Senate is illuminating.
In the most recent budget, Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed a provision allowing the Secretary of State to re-refer election law cases to the attorney general if the county prosecutor doesn’t bring charges within a year.
That idea came from Senate Bill 4, which has passed the Senate and is now moving through the Ohio House.
When a prosecutor declines to pursue a case, he said, the matter should end.
“If a prosecutor decides that a case should not or cannot be prosecuted for whatever reason, the secretary of state can make the referral to the attorney general and hope for a different outcome,” Tobin wrote.
“This is forum shopping, and it undermines the integrity and legitimacy of our justice system.”
LaRose’s referrals
In a press release, LaRose emphasizes the “more than 1,200 criminal cases” he’s sent to federal prosecutors.
The secretary did not respond to Ohio Capital Journal’s request for an interview or comment.
Of LaRose’s referrals, about 1,000 appear to be instances of illegal registration alone.
LaRose notes only 167 examples of noncitizens allegedly casting a ballot spread over the last eight years of four federal elections.
Ohioans cast almost 27.5 million ballots in those elections.
Even if every single one of LaRose’s allegations proves true, that’s a rate of .0006%.
LaRose also cites 99 cases of people allegedly voting in two states in the same election, 16 of people allegedly voting twice in Ohio, and 14 of people allegedly voting after their death.
Additionally, LaRose referred four cases of alleged ballot harvesting and two more of people registering at an improper residence.
“We work tirelessly to ensure that every eligible voter’s voice is heard,” LaRose said in the press release, “and anyone who tries to cheat the system will face serious consequences.”
LaRose is not wrong.
In addition to the charges brought by Yost late last year, in 2023, a Shaker Heights Trump supporter named James Saunders was convicted of voting in Ohio and Florida in at least two elections.
But LaRose contends his referrals “have encountered varying degrees of adjudication from Ohio’s 88 county prosecutors,” and he’d like the U.S. Department of Justice to have another look.
“I formally refer for your consideration the materials we have gathered and submitted to local and state prosecutors,” he wrote, “and I have included with this letter documentation and evidentiary materials regarding each of the alleged offenses.”
Red flags
Ohio was able to nab Saunders thanks to a multistate data sharing agreement known as ERIC.
He complained states should be allowed to use the data without having to encourage voter registration — a core part of ERIC’s mission.
David Becker helped establish ERIC but now runs the Center for Election Innovation and Research.
He criticized LaRose for trotting out years-old evidence that has already been reviewed by state and local prosecutors.
Becker added that, in some instances, flagged registrations got processed despite an individual identifying themselves as a noncitizen, “meaning that they are, in fact, victims, not criminals.”
“To wait over a year,” Becker said, “and publicly submit this stale evidence to the Trump DOJ, immediately before elections that are happening in many states, certainly raises questions.”
And LaRose has argued in the past that federal officials should stay out of election oversight.
Early in the Biden administration, Democrats proposed a sweeping elections and ethics measure that would have made simplified voter registration, reformed redistricting, and strengthened campaign finance laws.
“Elections belong to the people and are regulated by their representatives at the state level,” LaRose said after a scaled back version of the proposal failed in the U.S. Senate.
“Washington bureaucrats have a long and storied tradition of messing up the most revered of institutions — we won’t let them do that to Ohio’s elections.”
Case Western Reserve University law professor Atiba Ellis sees LaRose scrapping those arguments about federalism now that the political winds have shifted.
To Ellis, it seems like LaRose is working backward from the Trump administration’s prioritization of immigration enforcement in hopes of finding a more receptive audience for his voter fraud claims.
Particularly in Ohio, there have been political conversations “some factual, some fanciful,” about the impact of illegal immigrants in our communities.
“Certainly, this would score political points for the people who believe in that narrative,” Ellis said of LaRose’s referrals.
Ellis also pointed to a recent court ruling rejecting a Trump executive order requiring proof of citizenship.
“This court seemed to rule, correctly, that the basic constitutional structure does not put policing elections within the purview of the executive office,” Ellis said.
It’s “dubious,” he said, for LaRose to attempt an end run around elected state and local prosecutors.
“Trying to make a state issue a federal issue in order to pursue political agendas ought to raise concern about the discretion that is being used by the Secretary of State,” Ellis said. “Given that state authorities, who are duly sworn to prosecute these issues, have declined to prosecute most of them, and appear to have done so on a reasonable basis.”
The women’s political organization Red Wine and Blue has sued Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose over changes to the voter registration process at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
Thanks to the federal “motor voter” law, car registration agencies around the U.S. have offered voter registration services to applicants since the early 1990s. New state law in Ohio requires applicants provide proof of citizenship before the bureau registers them or updates their registration.
Red Wine and Blue argued the change, passed as part of Ohio’s two-year transportation budget, “makes it harder for lawful, eligible Ohio citizens to exercise their fundamental right to vote.”
“Frank LaRose and Republicans in the state legislature should not be able to disenfranchise anyone,” she continued. “Especially not the rural Ohioans, elderly voters, students, and women who have changed their legal names through marriage and divorce who are disproportionately affected by this legislation.”
In a press release LaRose dismissed the case as a “baseless” and “activist” lawsuit. He added the state of Wyoming instituted similar changes and courts there have already upheld the policy.
“It’s common sense that only U.S. citizens should be on our voter rolls,” LaRose said. “I won’t apologize for, or back down from the work we do to ensure the integrity of our voter rolls.”
“We will win this case,” he insisted, “just like we’ve fought off the other baseless actions that such groups have brought against us.”
At root, the changes shift the burden from state agencies to individuals.
Under prior law, registrants had to attest under penalty of perjury that they are a citizen. Verification then happened behind the scenes with elections officials at the state and local level.
On the one hand, drivers renewing their license who previously proved their citizenship shouldn’t have a problem. On the other, it’s not hard to imagine ordinary people showing up to the BMV without a marriage abstract or divorce paperwork; or a senior letting their license lapse and then losing the ability to renew without tracking down a birth certificate.
Researchers at the University of Maryland have found more than 21 million Americans — about 10% of the eligible voting population — don’t have ready access to proof of citizenship.
The complaint
The Red Wine and Blue complaint focuses on attestation requirements in prior law. A sworn state statement was good enough in Ohio for decades, and it’s the standard many other states and the federal government rely on, too.
“Indeed,” the complaint adds, “Ohio currently allows residents to register to vote based on an attestation of citizenship — so long as they register somewhere other than the BMV.”
The problem with imposing proof of citizenship requirements, the group claims, goes back to the motor voter law. That measure states registration agencies may only require the minimum amount of information necessary to determine a voter’s eligibility.
“Because the (National Voter Registration Act) separately requires that all applicants must attest, under penalty of perjury, that they are United States citizens,” the complaint states, “requesting any ‘proof’ of citizenship beyond that attestation goes beyond the ‘minimum’ amount of information that is ‘necessary’ to determine an applicant’s eligibility.”
In short, Red Wine and Blue contends that Congress said a sworn statement is fine and that states aren’t free to go further.
Attorneys for Red Wine and Blue warned the secretary about that point in a letter prior to filing their lawsuit.
In a response, LaRose’s general counsel, former Senate President Larry Obhof, dismissed them out of hand.
The U.S. and Ohio Constitutions bar noncitizens from voting, he wrote, and Ohio law bars them from registering.
“When a license registrant does not present proof of United States citizenship and has not done so in the past, Ohio does not have ‘the minimum amount of information necessary’ to assess whether the registrant is eligible to register to vote,” Obhof said.
The broader context
In recent years, right-wing organizers have grown increasingly insistent that noncitizens are flooding the American electoral system.
Republican officials including Donald Trump and JD Vance have fanned those flames, and in the final weeks of the 2024 election, Ohio boards of elections were flooded with thousands of bogus registration challenges.
LaRose himself has made a point of pursuing alleged voter fraud aggressively. Ahead of last year’s election, his maintenance efforts erroneously swept in naturalized citizens.
LaRose’s office has flagged hundreds of individual registrations for review since taking office.
As part of a 2023 investigation, Ohio Capital Journal spoke to dozens of county prosecutors about those cases. Many described a similar pattern: ineligible people received a form and filled it out thinking it was required. In some cases the applicants even checked a box stating they aren’t a citizen but county officials registered them anyway.
Those cases are about confusion rather than fraud, the prosecutors claimed. Ohio’s new proof of citizenship requirements might limit those cases, but Red Wine and Blue contends many more Ohioans will be harmed in the process.
And for all the fear mongering about noncitizen voting, no one has been able to show it’s a substantial problem.
Following a more thorough review of LaRose’s flagged cases in 2024, Attorney General Dave Yost turned up a grand total of six cases of voter fraud. The 2024 post-election audit came back with an accuracy rate north of 99% yet again.
Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.
A federal district judge in Ohio has given the green light to a requirement that naturalized Ohio U.S. citizens show proof of citizenship to cast a ballot. In 2006, the same judge determined a statute requiring challenged voters provide proof was unconstitutional because it “subjects naturalized citizens to disparate treatment,” and permanently enjoined the law.
Now, however, the judge says circumstances are different, and the plaintiffs demanding enforcement of that 2006 order haven’t demonstrated standing.
They brought the challenge after Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose revised the form used when a voter’s citizenship is challenged at the polls. Following the 2006 ruling blocking the law, a challenged voter only had to attest under oath that they were a citizen to receive a regular ballot.
LaRose’s changes reverted to the show-me-your-papers requirement, citing the enjoined statute as the relevant authority.
Following the judge’s order, the ACLU of Ohio issued a warning to naturalized voters urging them to bring citizenship documentation to the polls in case they’re challenged.
The judge’s opinion
District Judge Christopher Boyko, a George W. Bush appointee, emphasized that, “The legal landscape has significantly changed in the nearly two decades” since his previous order. He noted the statute itself has been amended to reduce the list of people who can challenge voters to precinct election officials, rather than a broader universe of potential challengers. That omission “likely limit(s) the risk of random challenges based on appearance or name or accent,” he contended. Boyko also noted lawmakers have passed legislation requiring all voters show photo ID to cast a ballot, and that the Secretary has sent letters to new citizens warning them to update their license.
On the question of standing, the judge was skeptical the voters who challenged Ohio’s law in 2006 continue to face “actual or imminent concrete injury” from the secretary’s actions.
“They have offered no affidavits at all,” he wrote. “None saying that these six plaintiffs intend to vote and possess a photo identification card with the non-citizen designation, subjecting them to further questioning and proof or be restricted to voting provisionally.”
He added the plaintiffs didn’t attest to missing the secretary’s letter urging them to update their IDs, placing special emphasis on the fact all voters must show photo identification.
“Unlike in 2006,” he concluded, “plaintiffs have not demonstrated an undue burden on their fundamental right to vote nor that they have suffered disparate treatment so as to warrant the exercise of the Court’s remedial powers on their behalf.”
At the same time, the judge declined to lift the underlying injunction, in an apparent effort to keep voter challenges to only those who show up at the polls with a noncitizen driver’s license.
Reactions
After succeeding in court, LaRose took to social media calling it a “big legal win for election integrity.”
“You can’t make this up — the (ACLU of Ohio) sued me to try to force us to accept NON CITIZEN IDs without proof of citizenship,” LaRose wrote. “We fought and WE WON! American elections are only for American Citizens and in Ohio we make sure of it.”
Meanwhile, the ACLU of Ohio focused on informing affected voters about what they need to do to cast a regular ballot.
“We urge naturalized citizens to look at their license,” the organization wrote. “If it still bears a “noncitizen” notation, bring your naturalization papers or U.S. Passport if you plan to cast a ballot in person, in case you are challenged.”
Any naturalized citizens who are challenged at the polls, but don’t have proof on hand, can still vote a provisional ballot. But for that ballot to count, they’ll need to go back to their board of elections with documentary proof of citizenship. The deadline for curing a provisional ballot is November 9.
In May, Nicholas Ross walked into the federal courthouse in downtown Columbus, and alongside about 30 other people, raised his right hand and swore to “bear true faith and allegiance” to the U.S. Constitution. A few weeks later he got a letter in the mail. Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office was questioning his voter registration.
Ross was born in England to Irish parents, but he has been living in the United States for almost 30 years. He’s married, has kids and a home in Westerville; he’s a professor and chairs the Department of Music at Otterbein University. A shiny black piano dominates his living room, and there’s a surf green Fender Stratocaster on a stand with amps tucked into the corners of the room. His son is the guitar player, Ross said, and when it comes to piano, he plays one-handed now because of a nerve injury.
“And so I play left hand music only,” he explained. “But I’ve got favorites, I like to play Godowsky — Leopold Godowsky.”
Naturalization ceremonies like the one Ross participated in happen regularly all over the country. In Ohio, federal courts generally hold at least one ceremony a month. In Cleveland the court regularly holds two. In addition, the courts routinely hold larger off-site citizenship ceremonies.
According to the most recent published data from the Department of Homeland Security, in Ohio alone, nearly 16,000 people were naturalized during the 2022 fiscal year.
A standard feature of these events is getting newly naturalized citizens registered to vote. As soon as they complete the oath, they’re eligible, and usually there are volunteers on hand with registration forms ready.
LaRose would know — he attended a ceremony in Cleveland back in 2020.
“To see them fill out one of these forms that we were passing out — the voter registration form — something really powerful,” he described. “To become a registered voter is something truly life changing for these individuals and for their families.”
But for every one of those newly eligible voters there’s a potential complication waiting to trip them up — just like it tripped up Ross.
Different databases
The state agency where most residents share information about their citizenship status is the BMV. When you go to get a license, for instance, you must demonstrate your legal presence in the state. If you’re already a citizen, that’s probably your birth certificate. But if you’re not, that might be a green card.
The problem is when a resident gets naturalized, they’re dealing with federal agencies — not state ones. So, if that new citizen previously got a driver’s license, to the BMV they look like a noncitizen until they show up in person with their naturalization certificate.
“I was sent a letter that said, you have been flagged as suspicious,” Ross said about the letter he got from LaRose. It went on to threaten jail time if Ross had registered illegally and asked him to provide information about his citizenship if their audit was incorrect. He quickly filled out the form and sent it back, but the letter struck a sour tone.
“I think the letter should say we just wanted to verify,” Ross described. “Could you, would you, please provide this information for extra verification purposes? None of the ‘you will go to prison,’ ‘This is illegal.’”
“It’s an assumption that people are trying to cheat the system in the letter,” he said. “It should be a different letter.”
The secretary’s follow up only reiterated that impression, Ross said. In addition to acknowledging his response, it states “please know that the information you provided may be used to access federal immigration records for verification purposes.” He and his wife were both kind of shocked, and took it as another veiled threat.
“We will check — well yeah, that’s why I gave you the number,” Ross said. “I mean, again, you don’t need to say it. This letter would be absolutely fine if it didn’t have that, don’t you agree? I mean, it just seems unnecessary.”
Ross was also struck by the rapidity of the registration challenge. After becoming naturalized, he applied for and received a U.S. passport. That’s all he would need to vote and his driver’s license was valid for another few years. Considering he hadn’t moved, and wasn’t explicitly required to update his license, getting to the BMV wasn’t at the top of his list.
“Don’t get me wrong, I just did it, right?” he said, “and it’s only two months since I became a naturalized citizen.”
To Ross, the whole experience seemed overwrought, because so far as he can tell, he did nothing to deserve additional scrutiny.
“That’s all,” he said, “I’m just saying it could be done differently. Because the way it was written makes you feel like, Oh, I’m being accused of doing something wrong.”
Expanding scope
Monday morning, Cassandra Wade was at a Chillicothe campaign event for Republican U.S. Senate nominee Bernie Moreno looking for help. She was clutching an envelope from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services with her Naturalization certificate as well as the letter she got from Secretary LaRose challenging her registration.
Wade described getting the letter Saturday, and later visiting the board of elections to figure out what happened.
“I go over there, and they said I’m not on the voter’s registration because I’ve been purged,” Wade said.
“I’m a naturalized citizen. I did everything right,” she continued. “I waited my 10 years, I paid my way, did the medical, I worked, I paid my taxes.”
“And this is how now constitutional rights have been —” she added, miming an explosion with her hands.
Moreno campaign staffers were quick to take down her information and call the secretary’s office. When Wade got a call a later that day, she said LaRose’s staffers were even more perplexed than she was.
In the end, however, it appears LaRose’s audit prompted confusion rather than an actual removal. Cleveland.com’s Andrew Tobias reported LaRose’s team initially identified Wade through BMV records, but later verified her citizenship. A review of the Ross County Board of Elections website shows Wade is still registered to vote.
Unlike Ross, Wade’s naturalization went through years ago. She first applied in 2020, but because of COVID didn’t get to take the oath until October of 2022. She missed the registration deadline for that November’s election by just two days, but she’s made a point of voting in each election since. Puzzlingly, Wade claims she has visited the BMV since then, too.
Although Wade is relieved to learn her registration is still valid, she expressed concerns about how many others might wind up in similar circumstances. With three kids, Wade said, she really doesn’t have time to prove her citizenship again when she’s done nothing wrong.
“He’s picking on the wrong people,” she said of LaRose’s audit.
“If or when they do become citizens,” LaRose said, “I’ll be the first one to congratulate them and welcome them to the franchise. But until then the law requires us to remove ineligible registrations to prevent illegal voting.”
The Secretary’s press release describes checking cases against a federal database known as SAVE that should have record of naturalized citizens. It’s unclear, however, if LaRose’s office checked all the individuals against federal records. The release separately describes a group of 136 registrations they identified using BMV records.
LaRose did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Ohio Capital Journal requested the list of individuals removed as part of the audit, but LaRose’s office has yet to release any information.
Also on Thursday, 50 people filed into federal Judge Mina Nami Khorrami’s courtroom in Columbus. One by one they stood and introduced themselves to the judge and told her where they came from. The hopefuls hailed from countries all over the globe — Colombia, Jamaica, Ghana, India, Cambodia, and many others — but each one of them clutched the same small American flag.
From its founding, Nami Khorrami told them, U.S. citizenship hasn’t been limited to those who were fortunate enough to be born here. She urged them to take their right to vote seriously and do everything they can to inform themselves before casting a ballot. An immigrant herself, Nami Khorrami described how she came to the U.S. from Iran in 1977, and became a citizen in 1984. But she insisted her story is not unique — the United States is unique.
After taking the oath, the new citizens lined up for photos with the judge.
Speaking after the ceremony, Nami Khorrami expressed concern about naturalized citizens having their voter registration challenged. As soon as they take the oath, she said, they’re eligible to register. If there’s a problem harmonizing state data with federal data, she said, the state should do something about it. Perhaps the BMV could have someone come to the ceremony she suggested. Maybe the court itself would have to start warning new citizens to update their BMV records quickly to avoid the problem.
In a follow up email, she explained the court is looking into what it can do, but they haven’t taken any definitive steps yet.
What’s the best path forward?
In his press release, LaRose portrayed the effort as a balancing act. While he wanted to give flagged individuals “the benefit of the doubt,” he said he is compelled to protect state voter rolls.
“We want to make sure a mistaken registration doesn’t become an illegal vote,” LaRose explained. “We also want to make sure that lawfully registered citizens can participate seamlessly in the process, especially if their citizenship status changed recently.”
For Ross of course, the process wasn’t seamless — it felt presumptive and unnecessarily accusatory. And voting rights advocates worry other Ohioans who registered legally could get caught up in the process.
“It is important to have accurate voter rolls,” Jen Miller from the League of Women Voters of Ohio said. “My concern is that this process might actually be removing eligible voters from the rolls simply because those voters were intimidated or confused by the letter they got from the secretary of state, while also the secretary (is) using outdated information.”
Ohio regularly removes large groups of registrations from its rolls due to lack of voter activity. This supplementary process is often derided by critics as a “voter purge.” But unlike that process, LaRose has not publicly shared the names of the almost 500 voters he has ordered county boards to remove. That gives the public little opportunity to check the secretary’s work, unless individual voters come forward.
LaRose’s use of the SAVE database is an arguably an improvement on past practice. In an earlier story, Ohio Capital Journal referenced the system as potential tool to improve the office’s track record with claims of noncitizen voter fraud.
But Miller worries even that database has its shortcomings.
For one, it has no record whatsoever of people who are born in the United States. That means if a native-born citizen was included on accident, they might look like a noncitizen.
The database also requires users to have an immigration identifier to check. That is to say, you can’t just type in a name and date of birth to see if that person recently naturalized; you’ll need their naturalization number as well for the system to run its checks. If the secretary’s letter asking for immigration information doesn’t get an answer — whether because they really were registered incorrectly or didn’t realize a response was necessary or it simply went to an old address — they could see their registration removed.
LaRose noted at least 80 people didn’t respond to his correspondence.
It’s also unclear how quickly changes in an individual’s immigration status are reflected in the database. Ohio Capital Journal’s request for comment with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which oversees the SAVE database, went unanswered.
From the outside looking in, Miller explained, it’s difficult to see how agencies share information.
“But it is clear that there is an agency, conducting naturalizations nearly every day in Ohio, that has the best data for the secretary to use when verifying citizenship for voter registration purposes,” she said.
Miller allowed that BMV or Secretary of State officials could show up at naturalization ceremonies, but she argued even that is overcomplicating matters.
“Why couldn’t it just be that every time there is one in Ohio that information gets directly sent to the BMV and to the secretary of state?” she asked.
“You know what I mean?” Miller added, “To me, in my mind it should not even be as labor intensive as having to send a staff person to one of these.”
Notably, the secretary has called for access to court records as part of his advocacy for a measure called the SAVE Act. The U.S. House bill requires federal entities to hand over effectively anything states request to verify citizenship. But the measure’s far more consequential change would require every voter to demonstrate proof of citizenship to register to vote. Similar legislation in Kansas was overturned by courts after it disenfranchised thousands of eligible voters.
However he does it, Ross wants the secretary to double check before sending letters, not send letters to double check.
“Knowing that this can happen for recently naturalized citizens like myself, that that can be double checked even before sending that letter,” he said. “I just don’t feel like the letter should assume that I’m incorrectly registered — that I sent in the form incorrectly. I’d rather it be the other way around, you know?
Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose talks to reporters.
More than 150,000 Ohio voters could potentially not be eligible to vote in the upcoming Presidential election.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose recently published a list of 158,857 inactive voter registrations who are eligible to be removed from the Statewide Voter Registration Database — meaning they would be purged from voter rolls.
“These registrations are eligible for removal under the law because records show they’re no longer residing or active at the registered address for at least the last four consecutive years,” LaRose said in a statement.
Why are voters inactive?
A registered voter could be on the list if they filled out a change-of-address form with the U.S. Postal Service signaling they have moved or they have not voted at their registered address in the past four years after being marked for removal by a county’s voter registration system.
All 88 county boards of elections were required to collect and submit this data to LaRose’s office earlier this year. The voter purge is part of Ohio’s process of updating its rolls and removing voters who have moved out-of-state or died.
County boards of elections must complete their voter purge by July 22, so people on the inactive voter list have until then to take action.
What can inactive voters do to get off the list?
In order to not be removed from the rolls and still be able to vote in the November election, an inactive voter can —
Confirm or update their voter registration at VoteOhio.gov, by mail or in-person at their local county board of elections.
Update or confirm their address with their county board of elections.
Submit an absentee ballot application.
Sign a candidate or issue petition that is verified by a board of elections.
The deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 5 election is Oct. 7.
A voter whose registration has been purged can regain their ability to vote by reregistering on the Secretary’s registration website or by visiting their county board of elections.
Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.
Former President and 2024 GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump speaking at a rally in Dayton.
A couple thousand Ohio voters spent a blustery Saturday on a Dayton tarmac waiting to see Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. In front of bleachers done up with bunting, Trump promised the largest “deportation operation in American history” and compared immigrants to animals. He warned reelecting Joe Biden could be the last election in the country’s history and described people convicted of wrongdoing on January 6 as “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots.” Trump pledged a return to “MAGAnomics,” and threatened a renewed trade war with China.
After running the gauntlet of salesmen hawking “47” hats and Trump t-shirts, Margaret Wilkes said she thinks Trump is “the most important person in the world right now.”
“I love him dearly,” she added. “I think he’s a wonderful person, and I appreciate his leadership.”
Her friend Jackie Shook compared the country’s challenges to “our generation’s Pearl Harbor.”
But Trump’s visit was less about his own electoral prospects than those of his endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Westlake entrepreneur Bernie Moreno. The former car salesman has faced headwinds in recent days and Trump’s visit appeared calibrated to improve his chances on Election Day.
Polling has been light for the most part, but a flurry of recent surveys have shown a substantial share of undecided voters. A recent poll from Emerson University, for instance, gave state Sen. Matt Dolan a narrow lead within the margin of error. But even more notable, the biggest share of respondents remained undecided about who to support. A poll a conducted by Florida Atlantic University found reached a similar conclusion.
Moreno has also found himself fending off controversy after the AP reported his email address was associated with a profile on Adult Friend Finder. He quickly dismissed it as a prank by a former intern. After the founder of the website described the profile as “consistent with a prank or someone just checking out the site,” Moreno’s campaign claimed it “completely debunked” the story.
Moreno’s stump speech
On stage, Moreno cast Tuesday’s primary election as a stark choice for Republican voters.
“This is the last gasp of breath of the swamp RINO establishment in Ohio,” he said. “And I need you on Tuesday to stab it right in the heart and make it clear that in Ohio we put America First.”
To Moreno, that so-called RINO, or Republican in Name Only, establishment is personified in Matt Dolan. In the last two weeks, Dolan has picked up the endorsements of former U.S. Sen. Rob Portman and Gov. Mike DeWine, despite the latter previously stating he wouldn’t weigh in.
And although Moreno is undoubtedly correct that Trump is very popular among Ohio’s GOP voters, Trump’s appeal isn’t unlimited. Both of those more centrist politicians, for instance, outperformed Trump the last time they went before voters. In 2016, Portman did six points better than Trump, and DeWine’s 62% share in 2022 is about 10 points better than either of Trump’s showings in Ohio.
In terms of policy, Moreno filled out the conservative bingo card — energy dominance, protecting the Second Amendment, eliminating the U.S. Department of Education. But perhaps his biggest response came from hard-line immigration talking points.
“If you’re in this country illegally,” he said, “listen clearly — listen very clearly. Starting in January 2025, you will be deported.”
Although Moreno’s opponents, Dolan and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose have made immigration and border enforcement the centerpiece of their campaigns as well, they’ve criticized Moreno’s deportation promises as unrealistic.
And in a reminder of how deep-seated COVID-19 conspiracy thinking is among Republicans, Moreno also got a huge applause from tying the pandemic to international organizations like the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization.
“To the WEF and the World Health Organization, if you think that you can fool us ever again by unleashing a virus on America, locking us down, forcing us to get vaccinated forcing us to get masks, you’re wrong,” Moreno said.
In response to the pandemic and its associated recession, the WEF proposed what it called the Great Reset, which emphasized sustainability and equity as governments rebuilt. On darker corners of the internet, however, that has morphed into conspiracy theories asserting global elites either created the virus or are took advantage of to seize control of the global economy and take away peoples’ rights.
After Moreno invoked COVID policy, the crowd began chanting his name, “Bernie,” over and over again.
On his way out, Bill Lobl explained he was supporting Moreno, and that Trump’s endorsement didn’t make a huge difference for him.
“If you can start business and run it just like Trump did with his and become a person of the people then more power to them,” Lobl said.
Shauna Diedling insisted “Bernie Moreno is for the people of Ohio. Bernie Moreno is going to be change. Bernie Moreno is going to be good and he’s not going to be corrupt.”
James Sheets traveled from Columbus because he wanted his kids to see Trump. He explained Trump’s endorsement mattered a lot in decision to support Moreno. Margaret Wilkes and Jackie Shook are supporting Moreno as well, and Wilkes dismissed the Adult Friend Finder story with a simple, “I don’t believe it, basically.”
Still, it’s unclear how many undecided Ohioans he swayed. Every one of those voters were in Moreno’s camp before the rally.
Trump’s speech
Trump rallies have a kind of standard format — digressions, quips, threats, and attacks that get repeated over and over. The persistence of some lines is reliable enough that his supporters notice and comment on new twists in delivery.
On a slogan about Trump standing in the way of opponents coming after his supporters, U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-OH told the crowd, “We were out in Iowa with him during the caucuses and he changed that one a little bit. I like it even better now. He says they’re coming after my freedom because I’m fighting for yours.”
But with heavy wind, Trump’s teleprompters wobbled enough that he had trouble reading from them. “Great job, fellas, don’t pay these suckers please,” Trump said of the supposed teleprompter company. Without a reliable script, his speech was looser, his attacks sharper.
He cursed more than usual, too. U.S. Sen. Katie Britt, R-AL, won her Senate seat over Mo Brooks because “people don’t want to hear bulls—,” Trump claimed. What people had heard was Trump-endorsed Brooks encouraging Republicans to move on from 2020 stolen election conspiracies. After that Trump switched his endorsement to Britt who went on to win. He described California Gov. Gavin Newsom as “a bulls— artist,” and dismissed advisors urging him to tone down attacks on Republicans with “I don’t give a s—.”
That looser format gave rein to Trump’s already bombastic rhetoric. After warning China’s Xi Jinping that he’d place a 100% tariff on cars produced in Chinese-owned, Mexican factories, Trump clarified “if I get elected.”
“Now if I don’t get elected,” he continued, “it’s gonna be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s gonna be the least of it. It’s gonna be a bloodbath for the country. That’d be the least of it. But they’re not going to sell those cars.”
The Biden campaign was quick to pounce on the phrasing and connect it to the violence carried out by Trump’s supporters on January 6. In a press release after the fact, Trump’s campaign insisted he meant a metaphoric, economic bloodbath rather than a literal one.
While Democrats have seized on Trump’s own statements about taking dictatorial power, Trump insisted electing Biden could lead to the end of democracy.
“If this election isn’t won, I’m not sure that you’ll ever have another election in this country,” he said. “Does that make sense?”
He did not elaborate on his reasoning.
Trump promised to begin the “largest domestic deportation effort in American history” on day one of his administration. He argued countries in central and south America are sending their criminals to the U.S.
“If you call them people,” Trump began, “I don’t know if you’d call them people, in some cases. They’re not people in my opinion, but I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say.”
“These are bad — these are animals, ok?” he added.
Trump also made the dubious warning that illegal immigration imperils Social Security and Medicare. Although they benefit from neither program, illegal immigrants earning money in the U.S. pay taxes that contribute to the programs’ trust funds. Even if immigrants gain legal status, they may not work long enough to meet eligibility requirements. A 2018 report from the Bipartisan Policy Center found that while it’s not a silver bullet, increasing pathways for immigration would help bolster the Social Security system as the population of retirees grows.
As for Moreno, Trump told the crowd, “We have to elect Bernie to get in there and to seal our border, stop inflation, crush the deep state — we started that when we got rid of Comey, drill, baby drill, and prevent World War III.”
Without directly mentioning the Adult Friend Finder story said Moreno is “getting some very tough Democrat fake treatment right now, and we’re not going to stand for it because I know this man. We all know this man. He’s a hero. He’s a winner.”
Ironically, though, Moreno is actually getting some last-minute help from Democrats. An ad paid for by a group connected with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer ‘criticizes’ Moreno as “too conservative for Ohio.” The unspoken goal, of course, being to strengthen Moreno’s position in the primary and potentially set up an easier general election contest for U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown.
Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.
(Pool photo by Jeremy Wadsworth from the Toledo Blade.)
From left, Mike Kaylmyer moderates a U.S. Senate Ohio Republican primary forum between state Sen. Matt Dolan, Secretary of State Frank Larose, and businessman Bernie Moreno Monday, February 19, 2024, in the TLB Auditorium at the University of Findlay in Findlay, Ohio.
Ohio’s Republican U.S. Senate primary candidates met for their second of three debates at the University of Findlay Monday evening. Secretary of State Frank LaRose, state Sen. Matt Dolan, R-Chagrin Falls, and entrepreneur Bernie Moreno sat side-by-side on stage. The winner of the March 19 primary will face Democratic Ohio U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown in November.
On familiar issues like immigration, the economy and abortion, the candidates filled out the bingo card. There was no shortage of “finish the wall,” “cut taxes,” and “protect the unborn.” But even as the candidates played the hits their performance uncovered a bit of new territory and offered hints about the race ahead.
Team up on Moreno
Westlake businessman Bernie Moreno has secured a series of endorsements including several county parties, high-profile Ohio Republicans in Congress like U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan and U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, and of course, former President Donald Trump. The combined weight of those supporters is hard to ignore, and both of Moreno’s competitors obliged, giving him plenty of attention.
LaRose in particular peppered Moreno with attacks all evening. He criticized Moreno over a Massachusetts wage theft lawsuit and for sitting on a board that made donations to Planned Parenthood. He brought up past op-eds in which Moreno advocated for greater wind and solar subsidies or more lenient immigration laws.
“He wrote an article that said there should be a path to citizenship and my team will share it,” LaRose said. “It’s his own words. But now that he wants to try to convince people he’s a conservative, he’s changed his tune on that. Which Bernie are we going to get in Washington?”
“Both of you guys are reinventing yourself on the issue of immigration,” Dolan chimed in.
“Frank, you were wrapping your arms around No Labels which had a clear path to citizenship,” he continued. “And Bernie you are quoted as saying you want a path to residency, and you think it’s important that all illegals become U.S. citizens.”
But Moreno pushed back, arguing “this is what they do, this is what career politicians do, they don’t want businesspeople and outsiders in their game,” after LaRose brought up the wage theft suit. In that case, a judge determined Moreno destroyed evidence despite a court order to preserve it.
After LaRose criticized him over an energy subsidies op-ed, Moreno quipped “I was against HB 6. These guys weren’t.” He continued, “They’re going to have to answer for their involvement in that scandal to a different audience than the one that’s here tonight.”
Minimum wage?
Moreno and Dolan are both wealthy. They’ve both been able to write multi-million dollar checks to help float their campaigns. LaRose’s net worth isn’t in the same category, but he nevertheless loaned his campaign a quarter million dollars. In short, all three candidates are very far removed from life on minimum wage.
But when asked, very directly, if there should be a minimum wage at all, not one said yes.
Moreno argued, “the markets are the best way to determine what wages should be.” He insisted in his experience as a business owner that paying good wages gets good workers.
“At the end of the day, the markets will flush that out,” he said, “and make certain that you get workers that get a good job.”
LaRose landed in a similar place. “The challenge with these government interventions like so-called minimum wage is that it has a distorting effect on the market,” he said. “The market is the best way to set wages.”
All three took turns beating up on the idea of a livable wage.
“Look,” Dolan said, “the minimum wage is not intended to be a livable wage.”
“I’ve employed people,” he added. “We started some people at minimum wage, the purpose of doing that was to inspire them to work harder.”
Moreno also insisted the minimum was never meant to provide workers enough to get by, and LaRose warned about a potential ballot initiative to establish a $15 minimum wage in Ohio.
Throughout the evening the candidates hammered on the cost of gas and groceries, but explicitly opposing minimum and livable wages would seem to hurt the Ohioans pinched most by higher prices.
In a press conference prebuttal hosted by Ohio Democrats, Ohio Federation of Teachers president Melissa Cropper argued, “The Morenos of the world see us workers as expendable line items there to help them maximize the profits, while paying us the least amount that they can pay us.”
Peeking toward the general
Still, the Republican candidates took pains to differentiate themselves based on the threat they pose to Brown.
Dolan repeatedly pointed to his record addressing issues raised in the debate at the state level.
“I’m glad to hear that my opponents are talking about all the things that I’ve been able to do here in Ohio that we need to do at the Washington level, so experience matters,” he said.
But Dolan also offered a reality check on abortion, noting Brown won reelection in 2018 with only 16 counties. In 13 of those, Dolan said, the abortion rights measure, Issue 1, out-performed Brown’s 2018 figures. He argued Moreno and LaRose’s recent positions on abortion — no exceptions and a 6-week ban respectively — will taint them in the general election.
Responding to missing out on Trump’s endorsement, LaRose pointed to the backing of pro-gun and anti-abortion groups in Ohio.
“I’m the one that doesn’t just say it, I’m the one that has proven it, but I’m also the one that can defeat Sherrod Brown,” LaRose argued. “We need to defeat Sherrod Brown and replace him with someone who actually shares our values. I’m the one that checks both of those boxes.”
Meanwhile, Moreno leaned on Trump’s decision to endorse him.
To LaRose, Moreno said, “He knows who you are. He knows who I am. And he knows that I’m the one who’s going to have his back and I’m going to win this primary.”
“We’re going to change this country over the next four years in a deeply conservative way,” Moreno added.
Ralph King, a grassroots GOP activist and former delegate for Donald Trump, hasn’t committed to a candidate in Ohio’s highly anticipated 2024 contest for a U.S. Senate seat. But there is one he’s already ruled out: Secretary of State Frank LaRose.
“He’s wherever he needs to be, depending on who he’s talking to,” King said of LaRose, who has overseen Ohio elections since 2019.
Few Republicans these days are threading a needle quite as microscopic as Ohio’s chief election officer. LaRose is not an original MAGA Republican, declining to endorse Trump even in 2020. But LaRose made a point of backing him for the first time this summer, ahead of a dinner at Trump’s New Jersey golf club. LaRose isn’t as far right as many Ohio Republicans, but this year he became a leading proponent of a doomed ballot measure aimed at making it harder to enshrine abortion rights in Ohio’s constitution. LaRose does not directly deny the results of the 2020 presidential election but has noticeably dialed up his rhetoric on election fraud since then.
Skeptics of LaRose, one of the leading candidates to challenge Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in a battleground state, do not quite buy his slow march from occasional Trump critic to MAGA believer. LaRose’s main competition for the nomination is businessman Bernie Moreno, who aligned himself with key members of Trump’s menagerie of allies, including former Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell and Arizona’s Kari Lake, the queen of election denial. The two men appear locked in a battle for Trump’s affections ― and possible endorsement.
“The switch — I guess we’re getting used to that with people like [Ohio Sen.] J.D. Vance, that people are changing who they are,” said David Pepper, the chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party from 2015 to 2020, who was an outspoken critic and sometimes legal opponent of LaRose over ballot access and GOP-led gerrymandering. Pepper, who has sat in court hearings and on panels with LaRose, called his transformation “disturbing” and said, “This was somebody who literally said a couple of years ago he wouldn’t endorse in any campaigns because he didn’t want the secretary of state position to be questionable.”
LaRose is one of only three GOP secretaries seeking a promotion to higher office in 2024, and the only one running for U.S. Senate. But LaRose, unlike West Virginia’s Mac Warner, who is running to replace Republican Gov. Jim Justice, has not called the 2020 election stolen — failing a major MAGA litmus test as he seeks, at the very least, for Trump to say neutral in the Ohio race. Warner was among the first secretaries of state to question the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s victory, siding with the majority of GOP voters who still refuse to accept the outcome of the last presidential election.
Missouri’s Jay Ashcroft, another gubernatorial candidate, has touted election security in his state and said that Biden was “duly elected by our presidential electors.” But Ashcroft raised eyebrows in January when he met with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, an election denier who travels the country sowing distrust over voting machines.
LaRose, to date, hasn’t gone as far as Warner. Though LaRose’s office did respond to some of HuffPost’s questions for this article, it did not comment on whether he currently believes that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Then-President Donald Trump greets Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose at an airport in Toledo, Ohio, on Jan. 9, 2020. LaRose is hoping for Trump’s endorsement for U.S. Senate.
Jacquelyn Martin via Associated Press
Ohio’s chief elections officer has gone from chiding both parties for challenging election results without evidence — calling it “problematic” and “irresponsible” in the weeks following the 2020 election — to conceding that Trump may have a point, even as LaRose’s own supporters praise him for the lack of voter fraud in Ohio. “It’s an even bigger problem in other states where laws & leaders are weak,” LaRose tweeted in February of 2022. “President Trump is right to say voter fraud is a serious problem.”
In March, LaRose pulled Ohio from a bipartisan voting-data partnership that aims to prevent double voting but that Trump claims “pumps the rolls” for Democrats — after LaRose had praised it only a month earlier. The secretary of state attributed the move to security concerns. Ohio has since partnered with Florida, Virginia and West Virginia — all Republican-led states — on a separate data-sharing initiative. Asked about the switch, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office told HuffPost, “Voter fraud is low in Ohio, but we will not stop protecting our elections in any way possible.”
LaRose is also looking beyond election fraud to woo Trump. In a statement Thursday calling himself “the Republican front-runner,” LaRose addressed the Biden administration’s use of executive power to continue building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, whose completion Trump vowed to achieve as president. “President Biden’s announcement that he’s going to resume building President Donald Trump’s border wall is too little too late,” he said in a statement.
‘Twisting Himself Up A Little Bit’
LaRose’s end game is clear to many observers: Last year, Trump’s endorsement lent some MAGA heft to author and then-candidate J.D. Vance, helping him become Ohio’s junior senator despite being anything but a Trump cheerleader before running for office. Vance has since more than come around on Trump, becoming one of his closest allies in the Senate.
However, LaRose’s detractors don’t see him pulling off the same feat as convincingly. “He’s a chameleon. This guy will literally support anything and everything he needs to,” said King, who is no fan of Vance either. In July, King lodged an election complaint against LaRose, alleging he was running his campaign before officially filing with the Federal Election Commission. LaRose’s campaign did not comment on the complaint.
“He’s a chameleon. This guy will literally support anything and everything he needs to.”
– Ohio Republican Ralph King, a former Trump delegate
LaRose didn’t endorse Trump in either of his previous presidential bids, claiming, at least in 2020, that he wanted to appear neutral as Ohio’s chief elections officer. In 2016, LaRose, then a state senator, tapped his background in campaign advance work to help former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who ran for president that year as one of the original Never Trump Republicans. LaRose, keeping his powder dry, backed Kasich in the primary but went on to help with Trump’s inauguration in 2017.
The 44-year-old Green Beret is especially skilled at handling campaign logistics, said one Republican who has known him for years. This same person also described LaRose as an “obsessed micromanager” — a trait alluded to in a Columbus Dispatch piece on high turnover in LaRose’s government office, which former staffers described as intense, understaffed and “[lacking] humanity.”
Just weeks after his July campaign launch, LaRose fired Rob Nichols, a communications staffer in the secretary of state’s office and longtime GOP operative, following the discovery of anti-Trump tweets from a burner account linked to Nichols. Nichols did not respond to requests for comment from HuffPost, and LaRose’s office said it does not comment on personnel matters.
“I think Frank’s definitely trying to position himself to be considered” for Trump’s endorsement, the longtime LaRose friend noted, “and in fact twisting himself up a little bit.”
Donald Trump Was ‘Right’
Moreno is now his biggest competition. A businessman with close ties to the former president, Moreno ran in last year’s primary against Vance, bowing out at Trump’s behest once it became clear he wasn’t getting his endorsement — but not before releasing a television ad in late 2021, called “Truth,” about the presidential election. “Donald Trump says the 2020 election was stolen, and he’s right,” Moreno says, looking directly into the camera.
Moreno has already lent his campaign $3 million. And in a sign he’s a favorite for Trump’s endorsement, Vance endorsed him a month into his latest bid in an apparent effort to head off a “bloody primary.”
Meanwhile, a third GOP candidate, state Sen. Matt Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team, has no interest in bending a knee to Trump, leaving him with an uncertain path in a GOP contest, despite finishing third last year in the primary to replace Sen. Rob Portman.
“The Trump endorsement in Ohio absolutely matters, and I guarantee you anyone running for office here would welcome that,” said Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life, a group fighting a November ballot measure to codify abortion rights that, if successful, may create headwinds for Republicans in 2024. Gonidakis said both LaRose and Moreno are in the running for an endorsement from his group, a powerful ally in the anti-abortion community.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose talks with staff members at Ohio’s election command center in Columbus. LaRose touted the state’s smooth 2020 election even as many fellow Republicans expressed unfounded doubts about the presidential result.
Jay LaPrete via Associated Press
As the behind-the-scenes jockeying for Trump’s affections continues, a source close to LaRose’s campaign suggested it would personally benefit Trump to go with the elections officer, for obvious reasons: “If you are the president and you are fighting four legal battles, most of them centered around the validity of the election — and you’re most likely going to be on the general election ballot in a state you cannot win the White House without — are you going to do anything to antagonize the guy counting the votes?” this person said. (LaRose and other secretaries of state, while they generally oversee elections across multiple counties, do not personally count votes.)
“If we had the opportunity to take Trump’s endorsement today, I’d take it in a heartbeat because the race is over,” the LaRose source added.
‘Probably Should’ve Won It By More Than That’
Trump has made it especially fraught for GOP elections officials like LaRose to run on their records, even if Trump won their states without issue. Many GOP voters tend to believe the false tenets of Trump’s “big lie,” including that “dead people” voted in the 2020 presidential election and that voting by mail is not secure.
At a rally for Vance in April 2022 that LaRose also attended (and was booed at), Trump suggested he may have won Ohio by a bigger margin than he actually did in the last election — 8 percentage points, or roughly 476,000 votes. “In 2016 and 2020, we won Ohio in a landslide. We won it by a lot of votes. Probably should’ve won it by more than that,” Trump said, hours after endorsing LaRose’s reelection campaign.
LaRose has consistently maintained that, although he cannot speak for other states, Ohio is conducting its elections securely and efficiently. Greg Simpson, a LaRose backer and GOP state central committee member from the Cincinnati area, said LaRose’s record of running “clean” elections in Ohio is the main reason he’s backing him in the primary. “The guy ran it flawlessly, and that’s a true test,” Simpson said of the 2020 election. “And he’s under a microscope every day.”
If he wins, LaRose could become the first secretary of state elevated to a higher office since 2018, when former Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp was elected governor ― with Trump’s backing — in a race that Democrat Stacey Abrams alleged was tainted by voter suppression. Kemp later broke with Trump over the 2020 election after Trump called Kemp’s replacement as secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, looking for more votes weeks after the results were final. That led to charges against Trump and 18 co-defendants who are implicated in a sweeping scheme to overturn the 2020 election.
“The guy ran it flawlessly, and that’s a true test.”
– LaRose supporter Greg Simpson
LaRose’s critics have noted that, like Kemp in 2018, he will be overseeing a highly contested election in which he’s also running.
“We pay you to do a full-time job. Do your full-time job,”Moreno said on a Columbus radio show in late August, suggesting that LaRose should step down. “If they want to run for a different office, they should resign.”
The Ohio Democratic Party, which has relentlessly targeted Brown’s potential opponents, alluded to the possible negative consequences of LaRose serving as secretary of state while running: “Frank LaRose will do anything to further his political ambitions, no matter how much it hurts — or costs — Ohioans,” spokesperson Reeves Oyster said.
The winner to emerge from the GOP scrum in March will face Democrat Sherrod Brown, the last non-judicial Democrat elected statewide in Ohio and a unicorn among battleground-state Democrats — as well as a former secretary of state himself. Before term limits, Brown was twice elected Ohio secretary of state but lost his third reelection bid in 1990, the only election that Brown has ever lost. Even Republicans acknowledge that beating him now is a tall task for whoever they nominate.
“[Brown] is gonna be a hard target. He comes off as a working-class guy,” said Simpson, the LaRose backer, “and people like that.”
For the 150 or so people who filled a church hall in Toledo, Ohio, for a Thursday-night campaign rally last week, the chant of the evening featured a profanity usually discouraged in a house of God.
“With all due respect, pastor, hell no!” shouted Betty Montgomery, a former Ohio attorney general. Montgomery is a Republican, which gave the largely Democratic audience even more reason to roar with approval. They had gathered at the Warren AME Church, in Toledo, to voice their opposition to a constitutional amendment that Ohio voters will approve or reject in a statewide referendum on August 8. Many of those in the boisterous crowd were experiencing a feeling unfamiliar to Democrats in the state over the past decade: optimism.
If enacted, the Republican-backed proposal known as Issue 1 would raise the bar for any future changes to the state constitution. Currently, constitutional amendments in Ohio—including the one on next week’s ballot—need only a bare majority of voters to pass; the proposal seeks to make the threshold a 60-percent supermajority.
In other years, a rules tweak like this one might pass without much notice. But next week’s referendum has galvanized Democratic opposition inside and outside Ohio, turning what the GOP had hoped would be a sleepy summertime election into an expensive partisan proxy battle. Conservatives have argued that making the constitution harder to amend would protect Ohio from liberal efforts to raise the minimum wage, tighten gun laws, and fight climate change. But the Republican-controlled legislature clearly timed this referendum to intercept a progressive march on one issue in particular: Ohioans will decide in November whether to make access to abortion a constitutional right, and the outcome of next week’s vote could mean the difference between victory and defeat for backers of abortion rights.
A year after the fall of Roe v. Wade, the back-to-back votes will also test whether abortion as an issue can still propel voters to the polls in support of Democratic candidates and causes. If the abortion-rights side wins next week and in November, Ohio would become the largest GOP-controlled state to enshrine abortion protections into law. The abortion-rights movement is trying to replicate the success it found last summer in another red state, Kansas, where voters decisively rejected an amendment that would have allowed the legislature to ban abortion, presaging a midterm election in which Democrats performed better than expected in states where abortion rights were under threat.
To prevent Democratic attempts to circumvent conservative state legislatures, Republican lawmakers have sought to restrict ballot initiatives across the country. Similar efforts are under way or have already won approval in states including Florida, Missouri, North Dakota, and Idaho. But to Democrats in Ohio and beyond, the August special election is perhaps the most brazen effort yet by Republicans to subvert the will of voters. Polls show that in Ohio, the abortion-rights amendment is likely to win more than 50 percent of the vote, as have similar ballot measures in other states. For Republicans to propose raising the threshold three months before the abortion vote in November looks like a transparent bid to move the proverbial goalposts right when their opponents are about to score.
“I don’t think I’ve seen such a naked attempt to stay in power,” a former Democratic governor of Ohio, Dick Celeste, told the church crowd in Toledo. As in Kansas a year ago, the Republican majority in the state legislature scheduled the referendum for August—a time when the party assumed turnout would be low and favorable to their cause. (Adding to the Democratic outrage is the fact that just a few months earlier, Ohio Republicans had voted to restrict local governments from holding August elections, because they tend to draw so few people.) “They’re trying to slip it in,” Kelsey Suffel, a Democratic voter from Perrysburg, told me after she had cast an early vote.
That Ohio Republicans would try a similar gambit so soon after the defeat their counterparts suffered in Kansas struck many Democrats as a sign of desperation. “The winds of change are blowing,” Celeste said in Toledo. “They’re afraid, and they should be afraid, because the people won’t tolerate it.”
The upcoming vote will serve as an important measure of strength for Ohio Democrats ahead of elections in the state next year that could determine control of Congress. Democrats have had a long losing streak in Ohio. Donald Trump easily won the state in 2016 and 2020, and Republicans have won every statewide office except for that of Senator Sherrod Brown, who faces reelection next year. Still, there’s reason to believe Celeste is right to be optimistic. A Suffolk University poll released last week found that 57 percent of registered voters planned to vote against Issue 1. (A private survey commissioned by a nonpartisan group also found the August amendment losing, a Republican who had seen the results told me on the condition of anonymity.) Early-voting numbers have swamped predictions of low participation in an August election, suggesting that abortion remains a key motivator for getting people to turn out. Groups opposing the amendment have significantly outspent supporters of the change.
Abortion isn’t explicitly on the ballot in Ohio next week, but the clear linkage between this referendum and the one on reproductive rights in November has divided the Republican coalition. Although the state’s current Republican governor, Mike DeWine, backs Issue 1, the two living GOP former governors, Bob Taft and John Kasich, oppose it as an overreach by the legislature.
“That’s the giant cloud on this issue,” Steve Stivers, a former Republican member of Congress who now heads the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, told me. The Chamber of Commerce backs the amendment because, as Stivers said, it’ll help stop “bad ideas” such as raising the minimum wage, marijuana legalization, and proposals supported by organized labor. But, he said, many of his members were worried that the group would be dragged into a fight over abortion, on which it wants to stay neutral: “The timing is not ideal.”
Democrats have highlighted comments from Republicans who have departed from the party’s official message and drawn a connection between the August referendum and the abortion vote this fall. “They’ve all said the quiet part out loud, which is this election is 100 percent about trying to prevent abortion rights from having a fair election in the fall,” the state Democratic chair, Liz Walters, told me.
But to broaden its coalition, opponents of the amendment have advanced a simpler argument—preserve “majority rule”—that also seems to be resonating with voters. “I’m in favor of democracy,” explained Ed Moritz, an 85-year-old retired college professor standing outside his home in Cleveland, when I asked him why he was planning to vote no. Once a national bellwether, Ohio has become close to a one-party state in recent years. For Democrats, citizen-led constitutional amendments represent one of the few remaining checks on a legislature dominated by Republicans. Moritz noted that the GOP had already gerrymandered the Ohio legislature by drawing maps to ensure its future majorities. “This,” he said, “is an attempt to gerrymander the entire population.”
To Frank LaRose, the suggestion that Issue 1 represents an assault on democracy is “hyperbole.” LaRose is Ohio’s Republican secretary of state and, of late, the public face of Issue 1. Traversing Ohio over the past few weeks, he’s used the suddenly high-profile campaign as a launching pad for his bid for the Republican nomination for Senate in 2024.
LaRose, 44, served for eight years in the state Senate before becoming Ohio’s top elections officer in 2019. (He won a second term last year.) He’s a smooth debater and quick on his feet, but on the Issue 1 campaign, he’s not exactly exuding confidence.
In an interview, he began by rattling off a litany of complaints about the opposition’s messaging, which he called “intentionally misleading.” LaRose accused Issue 1’s opponents of trying to bamboozle conservative voters with literature showing images of the Constitution being cut to pieces and equating the amendment with “Stop the Steal.” “That’s completely off base,” he said. “We’ve had to compete with that and with a mountain of money that they’ve had, and with a pretty organized and intentional effort by the media on this.”
LaRose likes to remind people that even if voters approve Issue 1, citizens would still be able to pass, with a simple majority, ballot initiatives to create or repeal statutes in Ohio law. The August proposal applies only to the state constitution, which LaRose said is not designed for policy making. Left unsaid, however, is that unlike an amendment to the constitution, any statutory change approved by the voters could swiftly be reversed by the Republican majority in the legislature.
“Imagine if the U.S. Constitution changed every year,” he said. “What instability would that create? Well, that’s what’s at risk if we don’t pass Issue 1.” LaRose’s argument ignored the fact that Ohio’s rules for constitutional amendments have been in place for more than a century and, during that time, just 19 of the 77 changes proposed by citizen petitions have passed. (Many others generated by the legislature have won approval by the voters.)
LaRose has been spending a lot of his time explaining the amendment to confused voters, including Republicans. When I spoke with him last weekend, he had just finished addressing about two dozen people inside a cavernous 19th-century church in Steubenville. He described his stump speech as a “seventh-grade civics class” in which he explained the differences between the rarely amended federal Constitution and Ohio’s routinely amended founding document. The laws that Ohio could be saddled with if the voters reject Issue 1, LaRose warned, went far beyond abortion: “It’s every radical West Coast policy that they can think of that they want to bring to Ohio.”
The challenges LaRose has faced in selling voters on the proposal soon became apparent. When I asked a pair of women who had questioned LaRose during his speech whether he had persuaded them, one simply replied, “No.” Another frustrated attendee who supported the proposal told LaRose that she had encountered voters who didn’t understand the merits of the idea.
Republicans have had to spend more time than they’d like defending their claim that Issue 1 is not simply an effort to head off November’s abortion amendment. They have also found themselves playing catch-up on an election that they placed on the ballot. “They got out of the gate earlier than our side,” the state Republican Party chair, Alex Triantafilou, told me, referring to an early round of TV ads that opposition groups began running throughout the state.
The GOP’s struggle to sell its proposal to voters adds to the perception that the party, in placing the measure on the ballot, was acting not from a position of strength but of weakness. The thinly disguised effort to preempt a simple-majority vote on abortion is surely a concession by Republicans that they are losing on the issue even in what has become a reliably red state.
When I asked LaRose to respond to the concerns about abortion that Stivers reported from his members in the Chamber of Commerce, he lamented that it was another example of businesses succumbing to “cancel culture.”
Confidence can be dangerous for a Democrat in Ohio. Barack Obama carried the state twice, but in both 2016 and 2020, late polls showing a tight race were proved wrong by two eight-point Trump victories. A similar trajectory played out last year, when the Republican J. D. Vance pulled away from the Democrat Tim Ryan in the closing weeks to secure a seven-point victory in Ohio’s Senate race.
“Democrats in the state are beaten down,” says Matt Caffrey, the Columbus-based organizing director for Swing Left, a national group that steers party donors and volunteers to key races across the country. He’s seen the decline firsthand, telling me of the challenge Democrats have had in recruiting canvassers and engaging voters who have grown more discouraged with each defeat.
That began to change this summer, Caffrey told me. Volunteers have flocked to canvassing events in large numbers, some for the first time—a highly unusual occurrence for a midsummer special election, he said. At a canvass launch I attended in Akron over the weekend, more than three dozen people showed up, including several first-timers. As I followed Democratic canvassers there and in Cleveland over two days last week, not a single voter who answered their door was unaware of the election or undecided about how they’d vote. “It’s kind of an easy campaign,” Michael Todd, a canvasser with the group Ohio Citizen Action in Cleveland, told me. “Not a whole lot of convincing needs to be done.”
The response has prompted some Democrats to see the August election as an unexpected opportunity to reawaken a moribund state party. The referendum is a first for Swing Left, which has exclusively invested in candidate races since it formed after Trump’s victory in 2016. “It’s a great example of what we’re seeing across the country, which is the fight for reproductive freedom and the fight for democracy becoming closely attached,” the group’s executive director, Yasmin Radjy, told me in Akron. “We also think it’s really important to build momentum in Ohio, a state that we need to keep investing in.”
A win next week would make the abortion referendum a heavy favorite to pass in November. And although Ohio is unlikely to regain its status as a presidential swing state in 2024, it could help determine control of Congress. Brown’s bid for a fourth term is expected to be one of the hardest-fought Senate races in the country, and at least three Ohio districts could be up for grabs in the closely divided House.
For Democrats like Caffrey, the temptation to think bigger about a comeback in Ohio is tempered by the lingering uncertainty about next week’s outcome—whether the party will finally close out a victory in a state that has turned red, or confront another disappointment. “It would be hard for Democrats in Ohio to feel complacent. I wish we would be in a position to feel complacent,” Caffrey said with a smile. “This is more about building hope.”
