COLUMBUS, Ohio (Statehouse News Bureau) — Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose said he suspects employees of a company that worked for groups on voter petitions and voter registration for this fall’s election may have violated election law. And the Republican secretary of state has filed charges in 20 counties for election law violations.
LaRose said he suspects poll workers working on behalf of Black Fork Strategies LLC may have violated laws when they worked on minor party recognition campaigns or put the “Citizens Not Politicians” redistricting amendment on the November ballot. And LaRose said his office’s election integrity unit may have found fraudulent voter registration forms.
“If they see patterns that indicate fraudulent signatures, maybe activity by the distributor that makes it seem like they’re forging signatures, things that are just unusual. It’s one thing to find out that someone just got their address wrong or has an old address and has since moved, whatever – human error and stuff like that,” LaRose said. “What we’re talking about here is that it looks to our election commissions like this is deliberate misconduct and an attempt to manipulate the signature collection process.”
LaRose said it would be up to prosecutors in 20 counties to bring charges against those responsible for possible wrongdoing.
“If a law is not enforced, it is not a law. It is just a proposal. And my job and solemn duty as chief election official is to make sure the law is enforced,” LaRose said.
LaRose said whatever happens, it will not prevent redistricting or ensure that any party candidates end up on the ballot.
In 2022, LaRose created the Election Public Integrity Division to combat voter fraud, which he acknowledged is extremely rare. He recently added three new positions to that unit to investigate election irregularities.
Last year, LaRose also removed Ohio from the federal Electronic Registration Information Center, which was designed to help states share voter registration information. In a letter, he wrote that the database’s operators had ignored calls for reforms to bolster confidence in the database’s power and instead taken steps “that have merely resulted in the transformation of a previously nonpartisan organization into one that appears to represent the interests of only a single political party.” Yet the month before he removed Ohio from ERIC, LaRose called it “one of the best anti-fraud tools we have when it comes to actually catching people who want to vote in multiple states.”
A total of nine Republican-led states have left ERIC, all after far-right claims that the organization is funded by progressive billionaire George Soros to help Democrats. Ohio has now signed an agreement with Florida, Tennessee and West Virginia to share data to verify voter registrations.
NEW INFORMATION – Updated on Tuesday, August 13, 2024, 12:20
Black Fork Strategies LLC clarified in a statement that the company itself was not the target of the alleged misconduct.
A spokesman for the office of Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose confirmed that the company itself, Black Fork Strategies LLC, was not accused of wrongdoing.
