Alleging more than 1.2 million errors in voter registrations during the 2022 general election, United Sovereign Americans Inc. (USA) and other plaintiffs filed a federal lawsuit last week against Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, state election officials, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The 349-page filing, which followed an analysis of state voter registrations that USA submitted to LaRose in January, is similar to actions that USA has filed in Maryland and Pennsylvania.
According to the report, 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. With that discrepancy, certification of the election was illegal under federal election law.
Federal election law also prohibits certification of elections in which voters with illegal registrations took part. For example, according to exhibits filed with the lawsuit, 59,025 Ohio voters registered to vote on or before their date of birth—58,723 of which were in Cuyahoga County—at the time of the 2022 election. In the most recent Cuyahoga County database, which I downloaded on August 2, 2024, 51,129 voters had registration dates before their birthdays. Almost all of them had registration dates of January 1, 1900 or January 1, 1901. Under election law, voters must have a correct registration date on record to be eligible to vote.
Similar analysis has been done, with similar results, in many other states, according to USA
Read more about the analysis here.
The suit asks the court to order respondents to ensure that:
- only properly registered citizen voters cast votes in federal elections;
- Ohio counts only votes that are properly cast; and
- that Ohio complies with critical infrastructure standards making voting systems compliant and ensuring that every ballot is correctly tabulated.
Congress set minimum standards that are required for every federal election to be considered reliable, USA said. Among those minimum standards, Congress mandated that in a federal election no more than one out of 125,000 errors in counting ballots may occur before rendering an election unreliable. With a total of 4.2 million votes tabulated for the 2022 midterm, the law allowed Ohio a maximum of 34 such errors for the election to be reliable. In comparison, plaintiffs cited 1,203,438 facially invalid registrations that accounted for 602,631 improperly counted votes, as well as a discrepancy of more than 1 million more votes counted than voters who voted at the time of certification, which exposed the fact that Ohio certified the election before all of the voter records were finalized correctly.
Along with USA, plaintiffs in the case 5:24-cv-01359-JRA, filed in U.S. District Court, Northern District Of Ohio, are:
- Coalition of Concerned Voters of Ohio;
- James Rigano, citzen;
- Carrie Perkins, citizen; and
- Jacqueline Loughman, citizen.
Respondents are:
- The state of Ohio;
- Frank LaRose in his official capacity as Ohio secretary of state;
- Office of the Ohio Secretary of State;
- Ohio Office of Data Analytics and Archives;
- Ohio Board of Voting Machine Examiners;
- Dave Yost, in his offical capacity as attorney general of Ohio;
- Ohio Attorney General’s Office;
- Merrick Garland, in his official capacity as attorney general of the U.S.; and
- The United States Department of Justice.
In the suit, the plaintiffs assert:
- Respondents have denied petitioners’ right to a fair vote;
- Respondents appear to have implemented procedures that have obscured the ability to audit the 2022 general election, thereby rendering the outcomes factually unknowable at the time of certification;
- Respondents have violated multiple federal and state laws, or negligently allowed such violations to occur, while loudly proclaiming the infallibility of Ohio’s election results;
- Respondents insist that petitioners have adequate voting rights, while simultaneously fighting from every conceivable angle to prevent petitioners from attempting to protect those rights; and
- Respondents’ collective actions in refusing to address the problem extinguish and undermine the very meaning of the right to vote in a fair democracy.
Plaintiffs further allege that the errors were not uniformly distributed across Ohio. For example, election results in Franklin County’s 2022 midterm were especially problematic regarding the city of Columbus, where the state’s records plainly show that one in every three voters who voted in that election was registered to vote on January 1 between the years of 1901-2022, when all government offices were closed.
Petitioners contend that it is reasonable to believe that systemic issues which occurred in the 2022 federal election in Ohio will continue uncorrected in 2024, 2026, 2028, etc., absent court intervention. The Writ of Mandamus seeks the court to order respondents to perform their ministerial functions by taking actions to rectify reliability issues evident in the 2022 election before certifying future federal elections beginning in 2024.
Plaintiffs seek relief from the court to make certain that, upon challenge, Ohio can prove the authenticity of every ballot counted by an unbroken chain of custody from the voter’s hand to the final certified result.
Lastly, the suit asks the court to clarify that in Ohio, “to certify” an election means that an election official attests under oath that Ohio election workers complied with all federal and state laws in certifying the final result.
Plaintiffs are represented by R. Aaron Miller, of R. Aaron Miller Law Office, Wheeling, West Virginia and Bruce L. Castor III, of Thomas A. Will & Associates, Pittsburgh.
In March USA filed 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.
Follow me on social media:
