Of 653 potential election integrity violations recently referred to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost by Ohio Secretary of State (SOS) Frank LaRose, six people have been indicted by county grand juries for illegal voting as far back as 2014, Yost said at a press conference this morning.
The referrals included 597 submitted by LaRose in August and 56 in September.
Of the 597 August referrals, Yost said 138 were for voting improperly, while 459 referrals were for “improper voter registrations.” Of the 138 improper voting cases, 131 have yet to lead to indictments.
Meanwhile, Yost said he has no authority to prosecute registration cases. Asked after the press conference why 459 improper voter registration cases were referred to the attorney general who has no authority to prosecute them, Steve Irwin, spokesman for Yost, said, “Your question about referrals is better directed to the secretary of state’s office.”
I am awaiting a response from LaRose’s office.
Black Fork Strategies
I also am awaiting information from Yost’s office about how many of the improper registration referrals involve Black Fork Strategies LLC, a company that has submitted improper—if not fraudulent—voter registrations in Cuyahoga and other counties in Ohio as confirmed by those counties’ boards of election. In all, Black Fork has submitted more than 21,000 voter registrations to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections this year. Yost also said he would provide insight about any referrals that involve Second Street Associates, a non-profit organization that has submitted around 14,000 registrations in Cuyahoga County this year and has been flagged in other counties for submitting suspicious voter registrations.
“The Black Fork Strategies question—it is my understanding the secretary of state is looking into that as a separate thing,” Yost said. “I don’t believe that they were operating in the manner that is currently complained of in the time periods that we’re looking at [2014 to 2020]. So this is not about that case. I’ll refer you to the secretary of state for status on his investigation.”
A reporter asked Yost why he is just now receiving SOS referrals about voting violations that happened as far back as 2014.
“I got these referrals in August and here we are in mid-October and we have indictments,” Yost said. “I will refer you to the secretary of state on his choice of timing, but we acted with all appropriate speed and working these cases, sorting them out, trying to figure out which ones had been investigated already and which ones were ready to go to the grand jury.”
While Yost specified “past elections,” county boards of election throughout Ohio, including Cuyahoga, have referred to LaRose suspicious registration activity—mainly involving Black Fork—that could impact the upcoming general election.
“That’s a meeting that we [Yost and LaRose] need to have and talk about resources and how they’re deployed,” Yost said. “The [131] voting cases we are going to work through and we will bring the appropriate cases based on the investigations, most of which are not complete because they’re new cases.”
Meanwhile, regarding the August referrals from LaRose, “Only 138 of the 597 [August referrals] even involved voting—the rest of them are registration offenses and I need to have a sit down with the secretary of state about the value of those cases where there was no voting,” Yost said. “I think that we ought to be focusing on the voting and he’s got some resources as well if he wants these cases pursued. I’m thinking that I don’t really want to pull people off of officer involved critical incident investigations, child rapists and murderers to be chasing voter registration cases for past elections.”
Illegal voting
The six people who have been indicted for voting illegally were not U.S. citizens when they voted in elections between 2014 and 2020. Illegal voting is a fourth-degree felony in Ohio. A seventh voter, an Oberlin student who illegally voted both in Ohio and Washington, was not indicted, Yost said.
One of the six indicted voters is from Cuyahoga County (North Royalton), three are from Franklin County, one from Portage County and one from Summit County.
Meanwhile, the other 131 referrals for improper voting have yet to be acted upon, Yost said.
“In August, we had [referrals for] 138 voters [who voted improperly],” he said. “One hundred-twenty-one of those had never been seen by the Bureau of Criminal Investigation in my office. There had been no investigation done by our office, meaning we had to begin from ground zero on all of those cases.”
The 56 September referrals “were part of a much larger batch that included some of the August referrals [that] were not done,” Yost said. “These seven cases were the first tranche, if you will, of cases that we reviewed and made decisions on. So the work is continuing. There’s more investigation to do and I anticipate there will be at least some additional cases filed.”
Yost said the distinction between improper voting and improper registration is important because his office has the authority to prosecute improper voting cases.
“If the local county prosecutor does not move forward on a case that’s referred by the secretary of state, we also have the authority to investigate cases that are referred to us, but we do not have the authority to prosecute registration cases,” Yost said. “So the bulk of the cases that were referred to us in August and then a few more in September are not within this office’s authority to bring a criminal prosecution.”
A sacred right
He added, “If you are not a citizen of the United States, you’re not only not allowed to vote, but under our law, you are strictly liable under the criminal law for the consequences if you do so. We took the first batch of seven out of those referrals to grand jury and six of them were indicted.”
And so far, 131 were not.
“There are people that would say that these folks didn’t mean any harm and that these cases shouldn’t have been brought,” Yost said. “I would disagree with that. Voting in America is a sacred right. It is the exercise of the sovereign people in self-government. Our legislature has provided a serious penalty if a non-citizen tries to exercise the power that belongs to we, the people, the citizens of this country, not just any person who happens to be here.”
He noted, however, that there are cases that warrant prosecutorial discretion.
“I’m thinking of a particular case involving a 92-year-old woman that I declined to take to a grand jury,” he said. “I’m thinking of a case where we had an Alzheimer’s patient living in a nursing home. No public good will be served by prosecuting cases like that. However, let the message go out twofold. One is if you’re not a citizen, it is illegal to vote whether you thought you were allowed to or not and you will be held accountable in the state of Ohio. But the second is this is a very small number of cases. Voting irregularities like this are rare. They’re a small number and you should rest assured, your secretary of state flagged these cases and sent them to me. I took a look at them and I’m taking appropriate actions and enforcement. We should all be confident of the upcoming election that the laws are being enforced.”
Yost said the crimes for which the six allegedly illegal voters were indicted are fourth degree felonies that carry a maximum of 18 months in prison and five-year post-release control.
Illegal voters confused?
In answer to a question that suggested that county prosecutors are unwilling to investigate voting and registration violations, Yost said, “The county prosecutors are independently elected by their local constituents. They don’t work for the attorney general and it’s not my job to supervise them. In fact, I don’t have the authority to supervise them. So I’m not going to be able to characterize all 88 county prosecutors as having acted one way or the other or even individual county prosecutors who made individual determinations on individual cases. I will let [LaRose] and the prosecutors have their discussion.”
Morgan Trau, of WEWS-TV, Cleveland, and the leftist Ohio Capital Journal, which has been funded in part by the Wyss Foundation, whose founder, Swiss national Hansjörg Wyss, is one of the financial backers of Ohio’s Issue 1, asked Yost whether non-citizens may have been confused by new voting laws when they voted illegally.
“I disagree with the premise of your question,” Yost said. “I don’t think there’s confusion and I don’t think it was unclear. It’s in the Ohio Constitution that non-citizens may not vote. That’s been the law for a very, very long time.”
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