Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose yesterday said he has formally referred evidence of suspected election law violations to 20 county prosecutors for review and possible criminal prosecution.
He said the referrals were for violations “involving petition forms to grant minor party status, petition forms to place a constitutional amendment regarding redistricting on the November ballot and fraudulent voter registration forms submitted by canvassers working on behalf of Black Fork Strategies LLC.”
The Secretary of State’s (SOS) office has not immediately responded to a request this morning to elaborate on the specifics of the referrals to each county.
However, the referrals included suspicious voter registrations submitted to the Hamilton County (Cincinnati) Board of Elections (BOE) by Black Fork, which has been conducting voter registration drives in counties throughout Ohio and has submitted more than 20,000 registrations this year to the Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) Board of Elections.
During a July board meeting, Alex Triantafilou, Hamilton County BOE board member and chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, said a stack of voter registrations from Black Fork showed “outright fraudulent behavior,” and voted with the board to refer them to LaRose’s relatively new Public Integrity Division for investigation. Triantafilou requested that a progress report be presented at the next board meeting.
At that next meeting, held this morning, Sherry Poland, director of elections for the Hamilton County BOE, confirmed that LaRose’s office has referred the Black Fork matter, and others, to the Hamilton County prosecutor.
“[The SOS office has] investigated and forwarded information regarding Black Fork Strategy registrations, as well as Libertarian Party petitions that staff had reviewed and found to be suspicious [to the prosecutor],” Poland said.
It’s unclear what the issue is relating to “Libertarian Party petitions.” I’m awaiting an explanation from the Hamilton County BOE.
At this morning’s meeting, Triantafilou said, “I know from some communication with [Poland] that there is now is a criminal investigation and we have been instructed to let the criminal process play out.”
More than a year ago, on July 17, 2023, the Cuyahoga County BOE referred 18 suspicious voter registration cards submitted by Black Fork to LaRose’s Public Integrity Office for investigation. As of Wednesday, July 31, 2024 the registrations were still under investigation, the Cuyahoga BOE acknowledged. Through August 2 Black Fork had submitted 20,096 voter registrations to Cuyahoga County BOE in 2024. Of those, about 25 percent were new registrations. The remaining 15,103 were re-registrations of voters who already had been registered.
The Cuyahoga County BOE didn’t immediately reply to an inquiry today about whether any Cuyahoga County cases were among LaRose’s referrals to county prosecutors.
LaRose said his office handed over evidence to prosecutors in 20 counties, “where dishonest individuals were apparently trying to game the system. Every one of these has the potential to fraudulently impact an election, and, even though fraud is rare, it’s important to keep it that way by sending a clear message that misconduct won’t be tolerated.”
LaRose’s referrals came less than a week after he was named in a lawsuit that alleges more than 1.2 million errors in voter registrations during the 2022 general election. The 349-page complaint filed by United Sovereign Americans (USA), followed an analysis of state voter registrations that USA submitted to LaRose in January.
According to the analysis and the lawsuit, 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 about 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.
USA concedes in the suit that the 1.2-million voter-to-vote deficit dropped to about 3,000 votes after a 30-day “reconciliation period” that concluded on December 31, 2022. However, the suit notes that the LaRose illegally certified the election as accurate prior to the reconciliation period. Further, the suit says, “Ohio election authorities cannot account for or explain these discrepancies of 1,162,079 votes at the time of certification and 3,081 votes at the time of reconciliation.”
LaRose said Ohio law gives the SOS the duty to “investigate the administration of election laws, frauds and irregularities in elections in any county and report violations of election laws to the attorney general or prosecuting attorney, or both, for prosecution.”
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