Ohio

Ohio elections chief again orders limit on ballot drop boxes | Julie Carr Smyth/Associated Press

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has reissued a contentious order limiting the number of ballot drop boxes to one per county for the May 4 primary. In a directive issued late Friday, the Republican elections chief set the limit in the context of a federal court opinion describing Ohio’s absentee voting options as “generous.” “Even though Ohio law does not explicitly provide for the use of secure receptacles, commonly known as ‘drop boxes,’ for an absentee voter to return their ballot to the director,” he wrote, “this Directive, once again, provides for the continued use of secure receptacles outside of the boards of elections.” A virtually identical order LaRose put in place for the 2020 election drew fierce criticism from the Ohio Democratic Party, voting and civil rights groups, labor unions and several Ohio cities, leading to litigation. The state GOP, the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Trump for America campaign sided with LaRose in court. While courts allowed that order to stand, one describing Ohio’s restrictions as “reasonable and nondiscriminatory,” they rejected the argument LaRose had advanced publicly that he needed additional authority from the Legislature to expand drop boxes to multiple locations — because they’d initially established them on a one-time basis. Still, spokesperson Maggie Sheehan said in a statement on the new order that LaRose is maintaining the status quo while “the newly seated General Assembly takes up the question of the time, manner and location of alternative means for voters to return absentee ballots other than the United States Postal Service.”

Full Article: Ohio elections chief again orders limit on ballot drop boxes

Ohio: As America Lurches Back Toward Reality, Stark County Confronts a Make-Believe Problem | Pete Kotz/Cleveland Scene

When Stark County’s voting machines grew so old it couldn’t find replacement parts, its election board reached a $6.45 million deal for new ones. Then a make-believe problem intervened. Residents pounded county commissioners with angry calls. They claimed that Dominion, the supplier whose machines are used in 26 states, was run by Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. And that its machines were programmed to change votes. They didn’t seem to notice that Chavez had been dead for seven years. Nor that Dominion is actually a Toronto firm founded to help blind people vote. Or that there’d never been any evidence of vote changing or the unauthorized use of magic. County commissioners were forced to put the deal on hold pending investigation of the fairy tale. Consider it the latest sign of America’s regression to a childlike state, where monsters lurk under every bed, and public officials must placate citizenry tethered to the make believe.  At Dodger Stadium last week, officials were forced to halt a Covid vaccination drive when protesters blocked the entrance, believing it a sorcerer’s potion. The feds wondered what to do about the stock market as investors bet on an obsolete game store thought to have hidden, magical powers. Meanwhile, President Bided halted work on the border wall. The Trump administration had spent $15 billion to pacify fears of a Mexican “rapist” invasion, though undocumented immigrants have half the crime rate of native-born Americans. CNN even revealed an imaginary plot to eat babies. “Once you get to baby eating,” says a White House spokesperson, “it’s like trying to govern in the middle of a German bedtime story.”

Full Article: As America Lurches Back Toward Reality, Stark County Confronts a Make-Believe Problem | Scene and Heard: Scene’s News Blog

Ohio: Uproar over Dominion voting machines in Stark County shows Trump’s falsehoods linger | Hannah Knowles/The Washington Post

Late last year, amid rampant false claims of a stolen presidential election, officials in a Trump-loving county in Ohio took a stand: They voted 4 to 0 to buy Dominion voting machines. It was a good deal for the county, years in the making, says Board of Elections Director Jeff Matthews, who heads the Stark County GOP as well. It was also a step into a firestorm — Donald Trump’s supporters were incorrectly accusing Dominion Voting Systems of helping to rig the 2020 results. “We knew exactly what we were getting into,” said Matthews, who has worked on the elections board for 30 years. Two months later, Stark County has yet to replace its aging voting equipment while May primaries loom. The all-GOP board of commissioners has fielded an unprecedented deluge of upset callers and spent a recent meeting peppering election staff with doubts and questions. Matthews says officials could go to court to push commissioners to make the purchase. A former Trump campaign strategist’s video urging people to “warn” Stark County authorities against moving ahead just fueled a new round of complaints, Matthews said, many of them from out of state.

Full Article: Purchase of Dominion voting machines in Stark County draws a backlash – The Washington Post

Ohio Secretary of State pushes changes after Trump-supporting vendor doesn’t deliver ballots | Rick Rouan/The Columbus Dispatch

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose is pushing new rules for absentee ballot vendors after a Northeast Ohio company that flew a Trump 2020 flag over its headquarters couldn’t keep up with production of ballots last year. Several counties cut ties with Cleveland-based Midwest Direct last fall when it failed to deliver thousands of absentee ballots on time during a general election that drew historic levels of voting by mail because of the COVID-19 pandemic.  The company had contracts with about 16 of Ohio’s 88 counties. Nine of them fired the company. Midwest Direct also received national attention for flying a Trump 2020 campaign flag over its headquarters as the former president criticized voting by mail. The company eventually removed the flag. Now LaRose is proposing that local boards of elections first get approval from his office before contracting for absentee ballot processing and get assurances in writing from vendors that they have the resources to handle the contract. They also have to consider “any action, appearance of impropriety, or political bias that the choice of vendor might impute on the board,” according to a draft of changes to the Ohio Election Official Manual.

Full Article: LaRose pushes changes after Trump-supporting vendor doesn’t deliver ballots

Ohio GOP U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan challenged by Democrats to repudiate stolen election claims | Sabrina Eaton/Cleveland Plain Dealer

Champaign County Republican Rep. Jim Jordan on Tuesday clashed with Democrats on the House Rules Committee over GOP claims that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen.” The confrontation occurred as Jordan argued against bringing a measure to the House floor that would urge Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the Constitution’s 25th Amendment to assume the presidency on the grounds that President Donald Trump is unfit to serve. Horrified that a mob of Trump supporters marched on the Capitol last week and rioted as Congress attempted to tally electoral votes that showed Democrat Joe Biden won the election, Democrats who control the House are bringing a measure to the floor that would urge Pence to displace Trump. Five people, including a Capitol Police officer, died as a result of the melee. If Pence doesn’t act, Democrats will bring up a measure to impeach Trump. The rules committee’s Democratic chairman, Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, repeatedly asked Jordan to “admit that Joe Biden won fair and square and the election was not rigged or stolen.” Jordan argued against bringing up what he called “a Democrat resolution to attack the president just eight days before he has said he will leave office, just eight days before we will have a peaceful transition of power as we have had in this country every four or eight years since our nation’s founding.”

Full Article: GOP U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio challenged by Democrats to repudiate stolen election claims – cleveland.com

Ohio: Why did Franklin County send out 50,000 wrong ballots? Board, vendor blame each other | Rick Rouan/The Columbus Dispatch

Franklin County Board of Elections officials and a vendor pointed the finger at each other for an error that resulted in thousands of absentee ballots being sent to the wrong voters in the 2020 presidential election. A new report released Tuesday in response to a public records request shows that, while an unnamed board employee was logged into equipment that stuffed the wrong ballots into the incorrect envelopes, board employees said it was a representative from the vendor who disabled a scanner that would have caught the problem. “While one may never know for certain who was at the keyboard when the error occurred, it is certain that the change was made inadvertently in the course of trying to troubleshoot a system error after an equipment failure and not a deliberate attempt to cause harm,” former elections Director Ed Leonard wrote in the Dec. 31 report to board members. Technicians for BlueCrest, the equipment’s vendor, were on-site at the board of elections on Saturday, Oct. 3, just days before ballots were to be mailed, to help resolve an error with the machine, according to the report. Leonard wrote that the optical scanner was disabled in an attempt to fix the problem, but it was never re-enabled. BlueCrest maintains that it was a board employee who was logged in to the machine and not one of its technicians who was responsible for the error, according to the report. The board declined on Tuesday to identify the employee who was logged in to the machine when the setting was disabled, citing security concerns.

Full Article: Franklin County elections employees, vendor blame each other for sending wrong ballots

Ohio: Audits made near-perfect tally of presidential results | Julie Carr Smyth/Associated Press

A post-election audit has found that Ohio’s 2020 votes were tallied to near perfection, including those cast in the presidential contest, the state’s elections chief said Tuesday. The announcement by Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose came a day ahead of a brewing showdown in Congress over the outcome of the race between Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic President-elect Joe Biden. Trump has refused to concede and continues, with the help of allies, to pursue challenges to Biden’s victory. The effort hasn’t targeted Ohio, which Trump won by more than 8 percentage points. LaRose has responded to months of unfounded assertions by the president, including that results were rigged, fraudulent or stolen, by touting Ohio’s bipartisan, decentralized election system and advocating transparency. That included making post-election audit results available online for the first time. In counties that used percentage-based assessments, presidential results were 99.98% accurate, LaRose said. “The incredible accuracy of the results as reflected in the post-election audits should make every Ohioan proud not only of their bipartisan election officials, but of the system we have in place,” he said in a statement. “Ohio ran a fair and accurate election.”

Full Article: Audits: Ohio made near-perfect tally of presidential results

Ohio: Franklin County examines 2020 Election, looks to future changes | Catherine Ross/WCMH

With the 2020 election in the rearview, the Franklin County Board of Elections is bracing for several changes in 2021. Thursday, the board was conducting its post-election audit to make sure all equipment and procedures worked properly. It was one of the final loose ends to tie on the election cycle. “It’s been an incredible year. We’re certainly glad it’s been completed and we’re putting it to a bookend,” said public information officer Aaron Sellers. Tuesday, the Board of Commissioners approved $2.5 million in funding for the Board of Elections to cover the costs of several things, including replacing the voter registration database and eventually replacing the county’s poll pads. Sellers explained the current voter registration system is 15 years old and increasingly costly to maintain. The board will be rolling out a new database ahead of the May 2021 Primary Election. On Election Day 2020, some polling locations experienced long lines when the electronic poll pads, used to scan voters’ IDs and find their voter information, were unable to download the large file. “The reason why we went to paper the morning of the election was associated with the inability to manage the amount of data that was associated with unprecedented voting activity,” explained Franklin County administrator Kenneth Wilson.

Full Article: Franklin County examines 2020 Election, looks to future changes | NBC4 WCMH-TV

Ohio tea party leader urges Trump to suspend the Constitution, declare martial law to hold new vote | Jeremy Pelzer/Cleveland Plain Dealer

A prominent Ohio tea party leader has taken out a full-page ad in the Washington Times calling on President Donald Trump to temporarily suspend the Constitution and declare martial law to stage a “re-vote” of the 2020 presidential election. The ad, placed by Tom Zawistowski of the We the People Convention, drew swift criticism from at least one top Ohio Republican. In the ad, Zawistowski states that when Democrat Joe Biden is formally elected the next president, as is expected, Trump should order the U.S. military to oversee a new election for federal candidates using only paper ballots. Zawistowski cited unfounded claims of voter fraud, many of which have been vocally pushed by Trump himself. Trump’s campaign has filed dozens of lawsuits in battleground states narrowly won by Biden, though those suits have mostly been thrown out or withdrawn. “Without a fair vote, we fear, with good reason, the threat of a shooting civil war is imminent,” the ad states, adding a vague warning that if Trump doesn’t declare martial law, “We will also have no other choice but to take matters into our own hands, and defend our rights on our own.” Zawistowski, also the executive director of the Portage County Tea Party, has been one of Ohio’s most visible tea party leaders. Known in Ohio political circles as “Tom Z.,” he ran unsuccessfully for Ohio Republican Party chair in 2013.

Full Article: Ohio tea party leader urges Trump to suspend the Constitution, declare martial law to hold new vote – cleveland.com

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose: ‘We’ve gone down the path of constantly challenging the elections when we don’t like the results.’ | Andrew J. Tobias/Cleveland Plain Dealer

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose defended the integrity of the U.S. election, calling recent claims from President Donald Trump and other Republicans disputing the results an example of a harmful trend of politicization of elections administration. LaRose, like a few other Republican, also said President Donald Trump has a right to make his case in court, but that he should do so quickly for the sake of an orderly transition into the next presidential term. He said he believes Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden won the election, based on currently available evidence. “I certainly have faith in Ohio’s elections, and I believe that other states… almost all, I think all the other states do it very well also,” LaRose said during an interview Monday with reporters and editors from cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. “All I’m saying is there’s a reason why there’s an opportunity to present evidence in a courtroom, and if you have that evidence you have to bring it forward and vet it out.” “Maybe it can even be cathartic for people to see it play out, but it has to happen quickly. That’s my point. If anybody believes that there’s something out there, they need to show evidence. Otherwise, making claims without any basis or evidence behind it is problematic,” he said.

Full Article: Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose: ‘We’ve gone down the path of constantly challenging the elections when we don’t like the results.’ – cleveland.com

Ohio: Voting-rights’ groups end federal fight over drop boxes in presidential election | John Caniglia/Cleveland Plain Dealer

A legal fight to add more drop boxes in Ohio counties before Election Day ended Thursday, as voting-rights’ advocates dismissed their federal lawsuit against Secretary of State Frank LaRose. The NAACP of Ohio, the League of Women Voters and the A. Philip Randolph Institute of Ohio filed a brief notice that dropped all claims against LaRose in U.S. District Court in Cleveland.The filing marked the end of a contentious issue that lasted six weeks and bounced between a federal judge in Cleveland and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in LaRose’s favor earlier this month and limited the number of drop boxes across the state. “We believe the appeals’ decision was wrong, but we didn’t have any other options,” said Jon Greenbaum, an attorney representing the organizations. “We weren’t going to make it better by appealing that decision.“At a future date, it can be brought up with new information, including from the 2020 election.”

Ohio: Most election vendors face little oversight in Ohio | Rick Rouan/The Columbus Dispatch

Outside vendors hired to help run Ohio elections have been blamed for mistakenly scheduling voter registrations to be purged and for slowing down the distribution of mail-in ballots during the past year. But state law provides little in the way of oversight for those vendors, and elections in Ohio are “decentralized,” left mostly to local boards of elections to manage. That means decisions about who to hire to print ballots, manage voter registration rolls and other outsourcing of elections administration are made individually in each of Ohio’s 88 counties. “There is scrutiny to the extent that they’re public agencies that are conducting a public bid,” said Aaron Ockerman, executive director of the Ohio Association of Election Officials. “Local boards of elections need to conduct due diligence when they’re considering their vendors just like any public company or agency would do.” But most of the state and federal oversight is reserved for voting equipment providers, and not the vendors that have had problems over the past year.

Ohio: Could Ohio develop online absentee ballot requests in time for November election? | Rick Rouan/The Columbus Dispatch

Elections officials and voting rights advocates are backing a bill in the Ohio Senate that would correct what they believe was a glaring weakness in the state’s mostly by-mail primary: the need for an online absentee ballot request system. But last week, when the House State & Local Government Committee debated adding that to its own version of a plan to prepare Ohio for the general election under the threat from COVID-19, Rep. Jason Stephens, R-Kitts Hill, questioned whether there is time to develop such a system. He compared it to Ohio’s overwhelmed unemployment claims system, which is going to take years to replace. But Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose believes as many as 50% of voters could cast ballots by mail in November, and he’s still pressing lawmakers to give him the authority to implement an online absentee ballot request ahead of the November election. So, how would he do it? Spokesman Jon Keeling said LaRose’s office has been thinking about the potential for an online absentee ballot request since he took office in January 2019. LaRose actually wanted to make the change when he was a state senator.

Ohio: House acts to block changes in Ohio election dates | Jim Provance/Toledo Blade

The Ohio House voted along party lines Thursday to prohibit the governor or any other elected or appointed official from altering the date, time, and manner of an election set in law. In so doing the House joins the Senate in responding to the decision by Gov. Mike DeWine and his health director, Dr. Amy Acton, to issue an emergency health order shutting down polling places just hours before they were to open for the primary election on March 17. The bill passed by a vote of 61-34 with Republicans in support and Democrats in opposition. Coming early in the state’s response to rising coronavirus infections, the governor’s unprecedented move was designed to reduce the threat of spread among voters and poll workers, many of whom are older Ohioans deemed at greater risk to complications from the disease. The bill leaves in place current authorization for a governor to postpone an election for up to six months in the case of an enemy attack.

Ohio: Lawmakers advance elections bill while removing language that rolled back early voting | Andrew J. Tobias/Cleveland Plain Dealer

Ohio lawmakers dramatically overhauled an elections bill on Wednesday, stripping controversial language that would have rolled back early voting for the November election. The House State and Local Government Committee on Wednesday voted 8-4 to advance an amended version of House Bill 680, referring it to the full House for approval. Republicans on the committee voted ‘yes,’ Democrats voted ‘no.’ Committee members removed language that would have prohibited Secretary of State Frank LaRose from sending unsolicited mail-in ballot applications to every registered voter in Ohio for the upcoming election, something that’s been done for every presidential and gubernatorial election since 2012. Instead, they authorized him to use federal funding to pay for the mailing, which will cost $1.3 million. Lawmakers also removed language that elections officials and voting-rights advocates believed would have eliminated early, in-person voting for the final three days before Election Day.