There’s some good news and some troubling news about election integrity and fair elections in Ohio.
The big news is the certification of the Citizens Not Politicians issue for the November ballot. If passed, it would create a nonpartisan citizens commission, consisting of five Democrats, five Republicans and five unaffiliated or independent members, to redraw Ohio’s legislative and congressional districts to reflect the actual balance of voters: no more will 53% of voters voting Republican result in a 75% Republican legislature. Support was overwhelming: 413,487 signatures were required; Citizens Not Politicians turned in more than 700,000. 535,005 were certified. It was one of the largest numbers of signatures gathered for any Ohio ballot issue. They reached the 5% threshold, required from 44 counties, in 58.
Shortly after that, we learned that a federal judge had overturned a provision in Ohio House Bill 458 — a voter suppression bill — that allowed only elections and postal workers and a short list of immediate relatives to handle someone else’s ballot under penalty of being charged with a crime. This meant that a homebound disabled or elderly person who had no such relatives in the area and couldn’t reach the mailbox was effectively disenfranchised. Asking their caregiver to drop it off risked having that person be charged with a crime.
Both of these moves to make elections more accessible and more reflective of the will of the voters have garnered blowback from panicked Republicans, desperate to hold onto their illicit, unconstitutional power.
No one is more panicked than Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose. He has dropped his smarmy, insincere professions of dedication to fair elections, which he is in charge of running, to post lie-laden partisan attacks on Twitter. The federal judge, he claims, is enabling “ballot harvesting” — an exceeding rare activity where someone collects ballots from many people for a supposed nefarious purpose such as throwing them out. Naming your caregiver as someone allowed to drop your ballot in a mailbox isn’t “ballot harvesting.”
As Secretary of State, LaRose was forced to issue a press release announcing the certification of Citizens Not Politician — and it seems to have caused him to have some kind of mental breakdown. This once smooth operator, who formerly issued platitudes about his dedication to democracy (contradicted by his actions), is now verging on hysteria, spewing wild-eyed fabrications such as this: “They just put a radical constitutional amendment on the November ballot that will allow Kamala Harris, Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi to gerrymander Ohio’s political districts to favor Democratic candidates. Are we paying attention? FIGHT!” (Note the MAGA language, reflecting Trump’s own words.)
He either didn’t bother to read the issue his own office just certified or he’s just losing his mind. He’s supposed to be running an impartial, nonpartisan election process, and he’s using his position to campaign against an upcoming ballot issue with lies. The scary thing is he’s in charge of writing the language that will appear on the ballot, and it certainly appears he’s fired up to deceive. That wouldn’t be without precedent: he altered the language on last year’s reproductive freedom issue to include anti-abortion wording.
“We are confident that Ohio voters will see simple, accurate language when they go to the polls on Nov. 5 to vote for this amendment,” said one of Citizens Not Politician’s leaders, retired Republican Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court Maureen O’Connor. It feels like she was firing a warning shot in LaRose’s direction.
LaRose’s Twitter meltdown includes hyper-partisan attacks on the Democratic presidential nominating process, and personal attacks on Columbus congresswoman Joyce Beatty. He’s babbling disjointed, right-wing talking points such as this gem: “They’re working RIGHT NOW to block me from keeping non-citizens off Ohio’s voter rolls. Open borders. Border Czar Kamala Harris. Illegal voters. Ballot harvesting. Are we paying attention? FIGHT.”
Again, keep in mind this is the official tasked with running nonpartisan elections who knows full well that non-citizens do not vote in Ohio and that there is no issue with illegal voters or “ballot harvesting,” never mind his tossing in spurious claims about “Open borders” (don’t exist) and “Border Czar Kamala Harris” (she isn’t and never was in charge of border policy). Do we really think we can trust him?
What else has this self-proclaimed defender of free, fair, accessible elections been up to? Another voter purge, of course. He’s dumped nearly 160,000 people from the voter rolls for the crime of not having voted in four years. According to spokespeople from various activist groups, those voters are disproportionately Black.
The good news is that you can re-register through October 7, and if you’ve moved or have any other reason to think you might have been among those purged, please check your registration with your county board of elections. The bad news is that although the period for purging voters as supposedly ended, LaRose doesn’t follow rules, laws or the Ohio constitution. Last year, he purged voters right before the registration deadline. And of course, he called an August election to try to make passing the reproductive freedom issue in November virtually impossible — after Republicans in the legislature had banned August elections. We’re still waiting for LaRose to reimburse Ohio taxpayers the $20 million that illegal election, held for purely partisan purposes, cost us.
Read more here.