The Ohio Senator wants to encode the electoral investigation unit at the Secretary of State’s Office • Ohio Capital Journal

Ohio’s senators are weighing a measure that would make voter fraud investigations of Frank Larose’s secretary of state are a permanent feature of the office and would give the unit in charge of looking for those crimes a more explicit mandate.

The sponsor of the bill, the state senator Theresa Gavaronone, R-Bowling Green, has successfully approved the electoral legislation prioritized by Larose in the past and is seen as a potential candidate for the position when the term of the secretary ends.

The approach would encode a “electoral integrity” unit within the secretary of the secretary that manages the accusations of fraud or suppression of voters, either for their own initiative or after the public’s accusations. According to the current writing of the proposal, investigating the accusations, regardless of its merit, it would be mandatory.

The office already has a citation power according to the current law and the new measure allows the secretary to send the cases to the Attorney General if a local prosecutor does not present charges within 12 months. The office would also be responsible for producing an annual report detailing the accusations he received and the results of his investigations.

Questions and Answers

Before the members of the Committee, Gavarone argued that it is necessary to establish the Larase Electoral Research Office in Law “because that could be eliminated in the future if we do not have a Secretary of State dedicated to electoral security and the confidence of the voters.”

She argued that her measure would increase transparency by producing an annual office of the office work and a greater responsibility in demanding the investigation of all the accusations that come on the office of the office.

In particular, Larose has not hidden his accusations of electoral fraud, regularly announcing the amount of records he has marked for research. However, many of the cases that Larose has identified has not transferred to County prosecutors. In many cases, they argue, the facts of the case point to errors or misunderstandings.

Ohio’s attorney general, Dave Yost, announces six accusations of voting fraud two weeks since election day

When the secretary again referred to his cases to the attorney general Dave Yost last year, the AG identified only six cases that were worth prosecuting of the more than 600 sent to his office. It turned out that one of those individuals was dead and, like the county prosecutors, Yost indicated questions about whether it was worth the time of his staff to divert the resources to clarify administrative problems with the voting registration forms.

In the committee, state senator Willis Blackshear, D-Dayton, pressed Cost Gavaronone. How many employees would the office use? How big would an appropriation need in the next budget?

Gavaronone did not have a specific response to either.

“I can consult with Secretary Larose as to how many employees they have at this time,” he said, adding that his invoice encodes an existing system, and would have to “verify what the costs were in previous years.”

State Senator Bill Delay, D-Columbus, expressed concern about false accusations of electoral fraud. Before the 2024 elections, the county elections meetings throughout the State were flooded with accusationsMany of them frivolous, of illegally registered people to vote.

“Are we going to the Office (s) of the County Prosecutor with these malicious and, for most of the time, false accusations that people are really committing fraud with voting?”

Gavarone retreated: “The electoral integrity unit would investigate the problem, investigate and determine whether there seems to be fraud,” he said.

“If the prosecutor does not process within 12 months, then the Attorney General can enter and process those cases,” he added.

Looking to the future

According to the current law, the Secretary of State must investigate problems such as electoral fraud, but county prosecutors are the main responsible for submitting positions. This disconnection has been the source of friction, and the secretary criticizes prosecutors to decline to pursue cases and prosecutors who argue that most references are weak.

Lou Tobin, who runs the Ohio Fiscal Prosecutor’s Association, said his opinion on references has not changed.

“What really are are councils that are transmitted from the office of the Secretary of State to the local prosecutor,” he explained. “And when the prosecutor tries to pursue the tip, they discover that there is nothing there, or find that there is nothing that can be processed.”

Even so, it is actually a bit optimistic about the bill. He argued that prosecutors are as concerned about electoral security as the secretary, they only need the secretary’s team to carry out more investigations and investigations in the front to “improve their work product and send us better references.”

He suggested that the Senate bill could be a way to take everyone on the same page.

Speaking after the hearing, the executive director of Ohio’s electoral officials, Aaron Ockerman, explained that his organization has not taken a position on the measure. If you are simply encoding the status quo, he explained, the county meetings will continue to operate as they have been.

“It really is, you tell us where to send the references and we will send them,” he said.

As for the registration challenges that bogue the county meetings before last year’s elections, he does not believe that Gavarone’s measure has an impact.

“All research work in relation to a challenge (registration) falls into the election board, because it is not necessarily fraud,” he said. “It could be a mistake with someone’s registration, it could be transposed numbers, but then we think of that research.”

Ockerman noticed that they would like legislators to take a second glance to Ohio’s challenge statutes.

“Wood County obtained 17,000 challenges,” he said, “and some of them were, like a register of voters marked in our database because there was an extra space when we obtained the registration of the BMV.”

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