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Conservative groups inspire grassroots voters in Ohio

Posted on by L. Dreeye
Conservative groups inspire grassroots voters in Ohio

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At a recent Board of Elections hearing in Wood County, Ohio, Ted Bowlus stood up and explained that he is, in fact, a registered Ohio voter.

“Will you need additional evidence other than what I have provided?” Bowlus asked election officials when he finished his speech.

“No, sir,” responded Republican board member Doug Ruck. “Your name is on the plaque right behind me.”

Bowlus is also a Wood County commissioner.

He and Ruck were among nearly 17,000 voters in the northwest Ohio county (about 20% of its voting population) whose registrations were challenged in the days before early voting began for the Nov. 5 election. Ohio law allows individuals to challenge another person’s voting rights, which is intended to catch ineligible voters who may be overlooked during routine maintenance of voter rolls.

But Wood County is not alone. Lorain County fielded nearly 1,000 calls on Oct. 4 as the elections office prepared for its busiest time of the year. Since the summer, the challenges have reached Democratic strongholds in Hamilton and Franklin counties, as well as more conservative areas such as Butler County, which has received more than 3,000 of them.

The impact is practical and political.

Local election officials must analyze all the issues facing them, which requires time, staff and taxpayer dollars. Sometimes they lead to action: Wood County, for example, suspended two voters who were confirmed dead. But more often than not, complaints are rejected, usually because they do not comply with federal law.

Then there is politics. Many of the challenges appear to come from organizations that cast doubt on the 2020 election results and inspired people across the country to dismantle voter rolls. The challengers and the groups that advise them say election integrity is their number one priority, but critics fear their actions could have dire consequences.

“The groundwork is being laid to question the legitimacy and integrity of the election,” said Freda Levenson, legal director of the ACLU of Ohio.

Ohio counties see surge in voter problems ahead of 2024 election

Ohio’s election boards, made up of two Republicans and two Democrats, have been grappling with these issues for months.

Since August, the Hamilton County Board of Elections has received more than 400 complaints from voters. Most of them came from one resident, Nancy Strzelecki, from Cleves, a small village west of Cincinnati near the Ohio River. On average, the board receives fewer than five voter applications per year, according to election officials.

Election officials and legal experts say citizens like Strzelecki, advised by the Election Integrity Network and other conservative groups, are using third-party websites to comb through public data and find what they believe are duplicate registrations or errors. The Election Integrity Network was founded by Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer and ally of former President Donald Trump who supported his efforts to challenge the 2020 election results.

Challengers in Franklin County targeted voters who were associated with homeless shelters or addresses with dilapidated houses, Franklin County Board of Elections spokesman Aaron Sellers said. In Strzelecki’s case, she searched for voter graves on findagrave.com, an online repository of final resting places. She physically traveled to mail centers and locations that some people listed as addresses to ensure they were not residences.

“We have access to nationwide change-of-address information, and we know about the North Carolina Board of Elections and other sites … you can go in and put in people’s names and put in their voting history,” Strzelecki said during the September meeting. .4 Hamilton County Board of Elections meeting. “It’s just a matter of us doing the research.”

Hamilton County officials said that of the 428 voters challenged, most did not respond to letters sent out by the board of elections. The board noted 334 voters whose registration was challenged, meaning that if they show up to vote this year, they will have to sign a form certifying that they are Ohio residents and did not vote elsewhere. Then they can vote.

Only one person showed up to the September board meeting to challenge the challenge: John Girardeau, who said he moved to North Carolina but returned to Hamilton County and intends to vote.

Strzelecki acknowledged that she did not find voters who committed fraud, and no one was removed from the lists as a result of her efforts. But she sees it as a positive thing.

“The good thing is that none of these people that we presented to the board voted in the election more than once,” Strzelecki said. “They may have voted out of state, but they didn’t vote in two states, so there was no fraud.”

Are last minute calls legal?

While Strzelecki has described the Election Integrity Network as helping election officials, some election officials say it goes nowhere. In Butler County, the problems caused confusion and about 20 people were removed from the rolls.

Butler County Board of Elections Director Nicole Unzicker said the board removed 20 people over the summer after someone filed a claim proving they were registered in Michigan. The district attorney later ruled that boards must adhere to the suspension procedure outlined in the Voting Rights Act, which requires election officials to ensure that a person has not voted in the state for at least four years.

“It was a new process for us,” Unzicker said. “We didn’t get anything like that, so our prosecutors were looking into it.”

Unzicker was reluctant to say whether those problems helped or hindered the cleanup of voter rolls. While she said the audits may have uncovered duplicate voter records, it delayed staffers from work they were already doing.

Legal concerns about these issues intensified as Election Day approached. Federal law prohibits states from maintaining voter rolls for 90 days after an election, so Ohio completed its latest purge by Aug. 2. data matching process,” the Ministry of Justice said.

Voting rights advocates in Ohio, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Brennan Center for Justice, wrote a letter to Secretary of State Frank LaRose earlier this month to sound the alarm. They argued that election officials in some counties violated federal law by rejecting voters who allegedly moved because of the problems.

In one case, the Delaware County Board of Elections deadlocked on votes to approve 241 nominations based on outside sources, meaning LaRose had to break the tie. LaRose overruled the objection “due to insufficient evidence presented,” according to a letter he sent to Delaware County Board of Elections Director Carla Herron.

“The challenge process is clearly outlined in Ohio law and has been in place for nearly 20 years,” LaRose spokesman Dan Luschek said in an email. “It makes our system more accountable. The Secretary commends citizens who have a stake in the integrity of our elections, as having accurate and up-to-date voter rolls is a key component of any well-run election.”

Delaware County separately voted to remove 84 people from the rolls, which the ACLU and Brennan Center say is illegal. Herron did not respond to requests for an interview.

The People Behind Ohio Voter Issues

Legal issues aside, election officials say nothing was discovered during the proceedings that would not otherwise have been disclosed. Election officials regularly check a national database that shows changes in voter addresses, death records and people who have not participated in voting activity for years, said Alex Linser, deputy director of the Hamilton County Board of Elections.

Still, challengers and groups supporting them say it’s an important piece of the puzzle.

“Any instances of potentially illegal elections in Ohio, No the challenge is unfair to Ohio’s lawful voters,” Kerry Tolochko, executive director of Election Integrity Network, said in an email. “Election Integrity Network is a platform that brings together citizens concerned about the proper conduct of elections from across the country, and we are honored to work with many of these citizens in Ohio.”

Wood County resident Tyna Romstadt, who has filed nearly 17,000 complaints in her county, said she has spoken with the Election Integrity Network and its Ohio affiliate but says she is investigating voter rolls as an individual. Strzelecki declined to provide details about the group’s meetings, but said they are all voluntary and provide recommendations and lists of data to help in their work.

Both women said concerns about the integrity of the election pushed them to become more involved.

“2020 was an awakening for me,” Romstadt said. “It was like that from that point on: finding alternative news sources, meeting people, networking, learning and… combining those thoughts, interests and passions into something that I could physically do to help.”

Election officials also want to prevent voter fraud and often tout Ohio’s voting system as one of the best in the country. Third-party challenges do play a role in the process, they say, but not when people are refusing thousands of such challenges just days before a major election with little evidence to back them up.

Now some are concerned that the problems are sowing more seeds of doubt ahead of a hotly contested presidential election.

“People will come out and spin this as if election officials don’t care,” said Paul Adams, director of the Lorain County Board of Elections. “I think it would be very, very detrimental to us because leading up to this election, people are already asking questions of election officials.”