An analysis submitted to Ohio Secretary of State (SOS) Frank LaRose alleges more than one million potential voter irregularities on the state’s voter records during the November 2022 mid-term general election.
According to the report, “Ohio Election Complaint,” which was obtained from the SOS office via a public records request, the official results of the election, as certified by LaRose on December 9, 2022, show that 4.2 million votes were counted. The state’s voter roll on December 10, 2022, identified 3 million voters who cast votes in the election—a 1.2 million vote difference, according to the Ohio Chapter of United Sovereign Americans (USA), which analyzed SOS voter files. With that discrepancy, certification of the election was illegal under federal election law. Similar analysis has been done, with similar results, in many other states, according to USA.
“As can be seen from the attached documents, it appears that there are serious breaches of statutory standards on both the federal and state level required by the law,” said Thomas Wood, state chapter director for USA, in the complaint filed with the SOS on January 19, 2024. “In total, more than one million potential voter irregularity/registration cases would either need to be explained or classified as illegal votes, obviously:
1) affecting compliance with federal and state vote procedure requirements,
2) reflecting election results certified as legal but which in fact were illegal, and
3) reflecting possible election fraud in Ohio during the 2022 general election.
Let me stress that this is not a vague complaint of election fraud conspiracy. Nor is not an attempt to overturn any particular election result. It is intended, however, to point up what may be ongoing illegal procedures and a failure to follow the law in elections in Ohio. If this is the case, they must be identified and remedied.”
Wood said “further action will be pursued” should LaRose choose to dismiss the facts forming the basis of the inquiry.
USA has filed lawsuits against the state of Maryland and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and I’ve heard reports that a suit was filed against the state of Ohio on August 1, 2024. PACER, an electronic public access service for federal court documents, as of August 3 does not show a filing and Wood didn’t respond to a request for a copy of the lawsuit.
“We would hope, however, that you would thoroughly investigate, satisfactorily explain and provide a meaningful response to our work reflecting more than a million potential anomalies and potential violations of state and federal law, rules and procedures affecting more than 600,000 unique votes,” Wood wrote to LaRose. “While we do not know who is responsible for these anomalies, we do know who certified election results apparently contrary to standards for error, accuracy and compliance. We hope that the facts are recognized, investigated and explained.”
Wood wrote that the certification of the 2022 election apparently was made despite objective, factual data, raising concerns that the state had massively compromised systems, and that the certification may represent serious disregard of voters’ civil and constitutional rights. He requested that LaRose respond to the USA report within 10 days—a request that LaRose obviously didn’t grant.
In the analysis, USA searched Ohio’s voter databases from several different dates to uncover 12 categories of irregularities. For each category, the report detailed the SOS files analyzed, including supporting SQL (structured query language) search code. USA submitted a USB drive containing 164 SQL and Excel spreadsheet files.
The analysis looked at each of the 12 categories of “ineligible or uncertain voter registration types” among registered voters as well as among those voters who voted in the 2022 general election. Overall, the report identified 1,203,438 apparent registration violations on the rolls, and 713,296 apparent violations among those who voted in the election, which impacted 602,631 unique votes, according to USA.
The categories were:
- Illegal duplicate registrations. Federal law requires each voter to have a unique state voter number. Individuals with two or more ID numbers—some with as many as five—were discovered through a search that revealed 34,233 instances, 8,025 of which voted in the 2022 election.
- Incomplete or unknown address. Applications to register to vote require a full physical address, with unit numbers in the cases of multi-unit dwellings. A search revealed 158,209 records that lacked a valid address, 41,126 which were for individuals who voted in the election.
- Registered on or before date of birth. A search revealed 59,025 records for which an individual registered to vote before he or she was born—48,957 of which voted in the election. “Registering on or before the day of one’s birth is contrary to law and logically impossible,” the report noted.
- Registered after the deadline to vote, yet voted in the November 2022 election. Ohio Revised Code requires voters to register 30 days prior to an election to be eligible to vote in that election. The USA analysis revealed 49,362 ineligible individuals who voted anyhow.
- Age discrepant registrants. The oldest living person in the U.S. at the time of the November 2022 election was reportedly 115 years old, according to media reports. USA searched for people over that age who were registered to vote in the election and found 63 such individuals. The oldest was 136 years old. Of those who were registered to vote, 17 hobbled in on November 8, 2022 to do so. Ninety-nine registered voters apparently were born on January 1, 1900 and 644 were born on January 1, 1800. Election law requires voter records to contain accurate dates of birth. The voter roll also contained 3,277 individuals who registered before they turned 17. Of those, 1,545 illegally voted, according to the state voter database.
- Registered on various days when boards of election were closed. The Ohio Election Official Manual stipulates that a voter is considered registered on the day that an application is received. That means the recorded registration date necessarily must be on a day on which the board of elections office is open. The USA report revealed 539,400 voters whose registrations were dated on Sundays, holidays and other days when offices were closed, 360,154 of which voted in the November 2022 election.
- Unexplained changes in birthdays. Correct date of birth is required for a person to register to vote. USA compared SOS voter rolls from September 12, 2020 and December 10, 2022 for records with the same voter ID number, but different dates of birth. The comparison uncovered 6,348 voters whose birthdays somehow changed from the earlier voter roll to the later one. Of those, 3,456 voted in the November 2022 election.
- Unexplained changes in voter history. Official voter records indicate whether a voter voted in each past year’s primary and general elections. They either voted or they didn’t. In a comparison of voter rolls on January 2, 2021 and December 10, 2022, 18,979 voters, as identified by their voter ID number, had voting histories that changed from the early database to the later database. Of those, 9,614 voted in the November 2022 election. In a comparison of the same two voter rolls, a search that included first name, middle name, last name and date of birth revealed 19,424 records in which a voter’s ID number and voter history changed between January 2, 2021 and December 10, 2022. Of those, 8,596 voted in the November 2022 election. There is no known reason for a voter’s ID number to change.
- Registration date altered backwards. “It is contrary to the logic of time that the date of an event in a future record is earlier than the date for the same event in a past record,” USA observed. Comparing voter rolls from December 4, 2020 and December 10, 2022, the analysis found 120,094 voter records on which the voter’s registration date in the latter record was listed earlier than it was in the previous voter roll. Of those registered time travelers, 63,513 voted in the November 2022 election.
- Voters with altered state voter identification numbers. The Help America Vote Act of 2022 requires that every legal registered voter in the state shall be assigned a unique identifier. A comparison of the December 5, 2020 and December 10, 2022 Ohio voter rolls, searched by first name, middle name, last name and date of birth, showed that 243,583 voters’ ID number changed between the two files. Of those, 118,857 voted in the November 2022 election.
Finally, on December 9, 2022, LaRose legally certified the results of the November 2022 general election in which 4,201,368 people voted. The state’s voter roll dated December 10 identified 3,039, 289 voters who voted in the same election.
USA has reported similar results in other states.
Wood, when asked for a copy of the Ohio Election Complaint in March, curiously denied the request although it became a public record upon receipt by LaRose’s office.
“We are not releasing the report for public review at this time,” he said. “However, we are moving forward with notifying relevant federal agencies. On March 21, it was sent to the FBI, Dept of Justice, and Dept of Homeland Security.”
Also in March, USA filed a suit, Maryland Election Integrity LLC et al vs. Maryland State Board of Elections. The case was dismissed in May due to lack of standing—the capacity of a party to bring a lawsuit in court. To have standing, a plaintiff must demonstrate a connection to, and harm from, the law or action being challenged. As illustrated by various election challenges and First Amendment cases in recent years, standing has become the overused catch-all excuse-of-choice for federal courts to avoid ruling on—and making public—the actual merits of certain cases.
According to the court’s dismissal of the Maryland suit, “Plaintiffs’ motion seeks to prevent defendant Maryland State Board of Elections from administering or certifying the 2024 primary and general elections until they are rendered secure and compliant with federal and state law. Defendant’s motion seeks to dismiss the case for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. This court has reviewed the relevant briefing and exhibits. … No hearing is necessary. … For the following reasons, defendant’s motion is granted and plaintiffs’ motion is denied as moot. … Despite plaintiffs’ numerous assertions of problems with Maryland’s voting system, this court can begin and end its analysis with plaintiffs’ standing. ‘To ensure that the Federal Judiciary respects the proper—and properly limited—role of the courts in a democratic society, a plaintiff may not invoke federal-court jurisdiction unless he can show a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy.’”
USA filed an appeal of the dismissal on May 17, 2024 and asked the U.S. Court Of Appeals, Fourth Circuit, to expedite the decision. The court denied the motion and the case remains open—most likely until after the November election.
On June 18, 2024, USA filed United Sovereign Americans Inc. et al vs. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania et al. If and when a suit is filed in Ohio, it is likely that the court will, following in the path of the Maryland courts, use standing as an excuse to dismiss the case before it is heard. USA said suits also are planned in Texas and several other states.
You can download the Ohio report here. The data and the methodology look credible and transparent to me. I know a little about databases and SQL, but I am not an expert. I invite anybody who is an expert to review the report and see whether there are holes to be poked in USA’s case.
Follow me on social media:
