Of more than 1.2 million alleged voter registration violations in Ohio during the November 2022 general election, almost half—42 percent—were collectively from Cuyahoga (Cleveland) and Franklin (Columbus) counties, according to an analysis from United Sovereign Americans (USA). USA examined the Ohio Secretary of State’s voter databases following the certification of the election.
Exhibits filed with USA’s lawsuit against Secretary of State (SOS) Frank LaRose and other plaintiffs last week expanded upon the organization’s analysis that was submitted to LaRose in January. According to the USA’s 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.
While noting the 1.2 million vote discrepancy, the report also identified more than 1.2 million violations in the state’s voter registrations. Of the total, 295,391, or 24.5 percent of the state total, were from Franklin County. Cuyahoga chipped in with 206,466 violations, or 17 percent of the total.
Franklin (29.3 percent) and Cuyahoga (20 percent) counties accounted for half—49.3 percent—of the 713,296 violations associated with voters who actually voted in the 2022 election, according to USA. USA’s data suggests that Franklin’s number of registration violations equates to 33 percent of the county’s total number of registered voters (887,503). Cuyahoga’s alleged violations equate to 23 percent of its number of registered voters (883,738). The number of alleged violations in three relatively small counties were higher than 50 percent of their number of registered voters:
- Richland County (Mansfield) amassed 45,339 violations—56 percent of its 81,628 registered voters;
- Fairfield County’s (Lancaster) alleged violations were equivalent to 54 percent of its 110,825 voters; and
- Wayne County (Wooster) amassed 37,549 alleged violations among its 73,800 voters, or 51 percent.
In its analysis, USA searched Ohio’s voter databases from several different dates to uncover 12 categories of irregularities in voter registrations. For each category, the report details 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 all 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.
Cuyahoga County dominated one of the categories of irregularities—“Registered on or before date of birth.” A USA search revealed 59,025 Ohio records for which an individual registered to vote before he or she was born—48,957 of which voted in the election. Almost all of Ohio’s violations were in Cuyahoga County. Of voters who registered before they were born, 58,723—or 99.5 percent—were in Cuyahoga County. Cuyahoga County accounted for 99.7 percent—or 48,957 voters—of those who voted in the 2022 election. The next largest number of violations was in Franklin County, with 103.
“Registering on or before the day of one’s birth is contrary to law and logically impossible,” the USA report said.
In Cuyahoga County, almost all of the “pre-birthday” violations were due to voters whose registration dates are January 1, 1900 or January 1, 1901. Under election law, a voter’s registration must be accurate to be eligible to vote.
The most recent Cuyahoga County voter database, downloaded August 2, 2024, shows 51,128 voters whose registration date is January 1, 1900 or January 1, 1901.
“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 report 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…”
Wood emphasized that the USA report “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.”
The categories of voter registration violations as identified in the USA report, and expanded upon in the lawsuit against LaRose, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and other respondents, 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. Of the total, 20 percent of the violations were from Franklin County and 7 percent were from Cuyahoga County according to USA data. Of those violations among registrants who voted in the November 2022 election, 20 percent were from Franklin County and 8 percent were from Cuyahoga County.
- 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 statewide search revealed 158,209 records that lacked a valid address, 41,126 which were for individuals who voted in the election. Of the total number of registrations with incomplete or unknown addresses, 36,736, or 23 percent of the total, were in Cuyahoga County. More than 14 percent were in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) and almost 14 percent were in Franklin County. Of the violations among people who voted, 19 percent were from Cuyahoga County.
- Registered on or before date of birth. This was covered above.
- 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 across Ohio who voted anyhow. Of the total, 26 percent were Franklin County registrants and 22 percent were in Cuyahoga.
- 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. Cuyahoga County accounted for 3 percent of these alleged violations.
- 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 by a board of elections. 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. Franklin and Cuyahoga counties took the lead in these categories, with Franklin accounting for 75 percent of voters who registered on January 1 of any given year.
- 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. Of those who voted, 17 percent were in Cuyahoga County, 9 percent in Hamilton County and 7 percent in Franklin County.
- 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, but the violations were more uniform across the state than for some of the other categories of violations. Of the total, 12 percent of the violations occurred in Franklin County and 11 percent in Cuyahoga County.
- 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. Of the total, Fairfield, Richland and Wayne counties collectively accounted for almost all of the violations. Cuyahoga County had 110.
- 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. Of the total, 10 percent, or 24,856 registrants, were in Franklin County and 15,526 (6 percent) were in Cuyahoga County.
In USA’s January report to LaRose, Wood wrote, “We would hope … 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. 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.”
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