Despite concerns by some Ohio lawmakers about voter fraud, most of the voting irregularities that elections officials reported during the 2012 general election did not result in criminal charges, the Northeast Ohio Media Group has found. Prosecutors in counties large and small told the media outlet their investigations typically concluded that the irregularities resulted from confusion by voters or mistakes by elections officials rather than from people trying to game the system. And while Republican lawmakers have introduced bills aimed at curbing voter fraud, some Republican prosecutors joined their Democratic counterparts in reporting no evidence of a widespread problem.
“Basically I found that there wasn’t an overwhelming pattern of voter fraud,” said Butler County Prosecutor Michael T. Gmoser, a Republican in a Republican-dominated county. “There’s a couple of isolated incidents of people making bone-headed decisions.”
Northeast Ohio Media Group looked at the eight counties that each generated at least 10 reports of voting irregularities during the 2012 election. The prosecutors in those counties – Butler, Cuyahoga, Delaware, Erie, Fairfield, Franklin, Hamilton and Medina – collectively reviewed 210 of the 270 cases reported statewide.
Full Article: Potential voter fraud cases from 2012 election often dropped as simple mistakes, elderly confusion | cleveland.com.