COLUMBUS, Ohio – Conservative activists for the past several months have mounted a statewide effort to kick thousands of registered voters off the rolls in the runup to the 2024 election.
Election officials in at least 13 counties told Cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer that they have received thousands of voter registration challenges, the vast majority of which have been rejected. Most of those challenges, the officials say, come from locals identifying themselves as members of the Election Integrity Network, a nonprofit established by a Georgia attorney who played a prominent role in Donald Trump’s unsuccessful attempt to overturn the state’s 2020 win for Democratic President Joe Biden.
Some of the challenges were unofficial, but most were initiated formally using state-prescribed legal petitions. These challenges are generally designed so one person can challenge the legitimacy of another person’s registration, usually based on the challenger’s personal knowledge of the other’s residency. But now, election officials say individuals are relying on online, third-party data sources purporting to show changes of address for thousands of voters as the main basis to cancel their registration.
Several elections officials said they’ve never seen anything like the wave of seemingly coordinated “mass voter challenges.”
“I don’t think any rational person that looks at the whole situation would fail to come to the conclusion that all the activity is based on election denialism and the movement that came out of 2020,” said Aaron Ockerman, director of the Ohio Association of Elected Officials.
Ohio’s Democratic-leaning urban counties have received hundreds of challenges. Cuyahoga County has had 140 challenges, but Hamilton County has had 376, according to elections officials. Franklin County has had “several hundred,” a spokesman said. Montgomery County, where Dayton is the county seat, has had 100.
More conservative areas, including some smaller and more rural counties, have also seen voter challenges. Butler County, which former President Donald Trump won by nearly 45,000 votes in 2020, has had 1,900 challenges. Wood County in northwest Ohio, received 100. Twenty voters were challenged in Perry County, two more in Portage County, and six in Lake County. About 200 students at Oberlin College, a progressive school in rural Lorain County, were challenged as well.
“The hearings have not happened here in Knox County in the last 11 years,” said elections director James Blazer, who oversaw handling of 14 challenges this summer.
Ohio county boards of election by law must annually cull voter registration rolls of those who have notified the U.S. Postal Service that they moved, haven’t voted over a six-year period or have died. Several elections directors said the recent challenges are essentially asking officials to jump start this process, without the requisite evidence to support mass voter cancellations, all in the months running up to what will likely be a closely fought election.
The challenges have been largely unsuccessful. In Hamilton County, an unsuspecting voter was recently called to testify before elections officials to explain his residency, based on challenges brought by someone he had never met. Election officials have been forced by law to arrange hearings on tight timetables during a busy season. And the challenges can serve as grist to delegitimize an election.
In most the counties, the challengers have self-identified as part of the Election Integrity Network. The national nonprofit was organized by Cleta Mitchell, a Georgia attorney who was on the phone when President Donald Trump asked Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes” for him to overturn his loss there, a call that’s now a key event in a criminal prosecution focused on a larger conspiracy to overturn the election. A special grand jury recommended that she be indicted, but prosecutors declined to do so. The nonprofit registered in 2022 out of the offices of the Conservative Partnership Institute, a think tank whose senior partners include Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows.
Late last year, Ohio Republican voter Vicki McKinney incorporated the Ohio Election Integrity Network. She soon sent the Licking County Board of Elections the names of 500 voters registered in Ohio and one other state. McKinney asked that the board cancel their registrations.
“We said ‘No, that’s illegal,’” said Tess Wigginton, Licking County’s deputy elections director.
Members of the Ohio Election Integrity Network also appeared at the Ohio Statehouse this summer to testify in support of legislation calling for a replacement of all voting machines statewide, allowing for the hand counting of ballots, and other election security measures pushed in the wake of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen or rigged. As Cleveland.com previously reported, its board members include an alternate delegate for Trump in 2020 and another one who describes herself as a “watcher” of the feed for an audit of the 2020 results in Maricopa County, Arizona.
Mitchell did not respond to multiple phone calls. McKinney in a phone call declined to answer questions, though she added that “election integrity should be nonpartisan.”
A national pattern
Polls aren’t forecasting a tight presidential race in Ohio. But they are in Michigan, Georgia and Florida, other states where the “conspiracy theorists” with the Election Integrity Network are mounting mass voter challenges, according to Brendan Fisher, the deputy executive director of Documented, a research and investigative journalism nonprofit that has tracked groups initiating mass voter challenges for the past few years.
He also noted a Pennsylvania news report published Tuesday on several citizens mounting challenges of thousands of voters, based on third-party data, from an organization called PA Fair Elections. Mitchell reportedly spoke at an online meeting the group held in June.
The “borderline frivolous” mass voter challenges are distracting elections officials and, he said, the equivalent of laying the groundwork as a basis to challenge 2024 election results. Voters who have done nothing wrong are sometimes just collateral damage.
“When the challenges do result in a hearing, average voters, eligible voters who have done nothing wrong, are being forced to defend themselves for having voted,” he said.
Elections officials are “interested in having a conversation” about whether the standard of evidence required to initiate a voter challenge is too low, Ockerman said. He called the mass challenges “a new phenomenon” pushed by a network of activists he estimates are in half of Ohio’s 88 counties.
Kelly Dufour of Common Cause Ohio has been tracking the mass voter challenges in Ohio and sitting in on some of the hearings. While the burden of proof technically is on the accuser to prove a voter is unlawfully registered, Dufour said it doesn’t feel that way when you watch a hearing in person. She said she was shocked to see that challengers who admit they have zero personal knowledge about a voter’s whereabouts and residency can even get their case heard.
“I can say that there is an orchestrated effort to challenge hundreds of voters at a time with outdated information and third-party software,” she said.
Dan Lusheck, a spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, said the office is “aware of the increased number of voter registration challenges at county boards.” He said the office is preparing an advisory to go out to boards on the topic, though he didn’t offer a timeline. Early voting for the general public starts in less than two weeks.
Nancy Strzelecki, a volunteer with the Ohio Election Integrity Network, makes her case to the Hamilton County Board of Elections at a Sept. 4 meeting that John Girardot should not be registered to vote given he moved to North Carolina. After Girardot testified to his Ohio residence, she withdrew her challenge. The board then considered hundreds more challenges brought by her organization. (Hamilton County Board of Elections)Hamilton County Board of Elections
‘We’re not trying to suppress anyone’
At first, Nancy Strzelecki sent 800 “soft challenges” to the Hamilton County Board of Elections. After working with staff, she and other volunteers with the Ohio Election Integrity Network whittled it down to 376 formal challenges. Strzelecki claimed the registered voters she flagged had moved to another state, registered at a commercial address, or were on the voter rolls in another state.
Her activism, she said during a Sept. 4 hearing, can hopefully “put the risk of any fraud out of the question.”
The Board of Elections dismissed some of the challenges outright and called for hearings on the rest, including her challenge of John Girardot. At a hearing on the matter earlier this month, Strzelecki admitted she didn’t know Girardot, but said, according to an online database, he had moved to North Carolina.
“What I was concerned with, and many of the people that are here with me, we’ve been looking at documents showing people have done national change of address and have moved out of state,” she said.
Boards of elections are comprised of two Democrats and two Republicans. The hearing with Girardot was led by Alex Triantafilou, a board member who is also chairman of the Ohio Republican Party.
Across from Strzelecki in a smally meeting room sat Girardot. Online records list him as a Democrat, but he said in an interview he considers himself an independent voter. He moved back to Ohio in June after living in North Carolina for three years for his fiance’s work. He had never met Strzelecki.
He told commissioners how he moved back to Ohio in June. He got his Ohio license at a county BMV after presenting four documents proving his residency. He offered to show anyone in the room his license.
Her claim having been completely undermined, Strzelecki withdrew her challenge, after insisting on one concession.
“Would you do us all a favor and make sure that you’re no longer on the North Carolina voter roll?” she asked Girardot.
From there, Strzelecki was joined by two other women with her organization as they explained their challenges of voters by the spreadsheet. No other challenged voters appeared at the hearing to offer evidence.
Triantafilou said he’s “almost there about granting challenges to people who may now be registered in another state.” However, after the board privately received legal advice, members reached a compromise. They unanimously rejected all the voter challenges. However, they agreed to “flag” the challenged voters so that if they appear to vote, they’ll be required to fill out an affidavit affirming that they’re legally able to vote.
Strzelecki thanked the board for their months of work on her challenges.
“Again, we’re not trying to suppress anyone’s vote,” she said. “We just want to make sure that the Ohio Hamilton County voter rolls are as clean and accurate as possible.”
Triantafilou didn’t return a phone call.
Jake Zuckerman covers state politics and policy for Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.
