Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) reported on Friday that his office discovered 630 cases of possible criminal voter fraud since he took office four years ago.
Incidents include 510 cases of potential voting by noncitizens, 97 instances of people possibly voting in more than one state and 23 allegations of election fraudsters using dead persons’ registrations. The department referred all of these cases to law enforcement, according to LaRose’s Year in Review 2022 newsletter.
The secretary stepped up election-integrity efforts last June with a directive to Ohio’s 88 county boards of elections, requiring them to implement new security standards. The state allocated $10,000 to follow through with the directive’s requirements.
Three months later, LaRose created a Public Integrity Division within his agency. While, pursuant to the Ohio Revised Code, the Department of State already investigated election-integrity concerns, the restructuring brought the various professionals overseeing the matter into the same office to boost efficiency. The new division, which hired more investigators to probe election-security threats, started operating on October 10 and LaRose is pleased with the division’s work so far.
“We took election security to the next level in 2022, earning national recognition and maintaining the integrity of our elections by investigating cases of voter fraud,” he wrote this weekend in a Twitter post.
The secretary’s newsletter described voter fraud and voter suppression as “exceedingly rare in Ohio” primarily because state officials rigorously enforce the law in this regard.
LaRose noted that his fellow Republicans are not the only ones who have welcomed his department’s efforts in the area of election integrity.
“If everybody in the country were implementing all of [Ohio’s] great guidance, I think we wouldn’t have to worry so much about the security of our elections,” Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity director Jen Easterly, a Joe Biden appointee, is quoted as saying.
In November, the left-wing New York Times credited LaRose’s agency with addressing inaccurate claims of election fraud when they occur by “set[ting] up a team to spot and quash falsehoods and conspiracy theories about the election before they go viral online.”
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Bradley Vasoli is managing editor of The Ohio Star. Follow Brad on Twitter at @BVasoli. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Frank LaRose” by Georgebailey2015. CC BY-SA 4.0. Background Photo “Election Day 2022” by Phil Roeder. CC BY 2.0.
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