Ohio’s top elections official last month continued to make seemingly contradictory statements about election security in the Buckeye state. Secretary of State Frank LaRose has repeatedly said that fraud is extremely rare in Ohio elections and then made statements claiming that it’s a problem.
Most recently, LaRose tweeted an opinion article from the Washington Examiner that dubiously claimed that “One need not be a conspiracy theorist to recognize that voter fraud does occur far too often…” The secretary tweeted it in apparent support of a voter ID law that Ohio Republicans passed in last month’s lame duck session of the legislature.
False claims that there is widespread voter fraud in the United States have undermined faith in elections and democracy, with 61% of Republicans believing that the 2020 election was rigged against former President Donald Trump, according to a poll conducted in September. They believe that even though Trump’s false claims have been rejected in scores of legal proceedings and many senior members of his administration have said they’ve seen no evidence of widespread fraud.
LaRose’s office didn’t respond to repeated requests to comment for this story. But in his public statements, he seems to say he’s conducted secure elections in Ohio while also throwing a bone to the part of the Republican base that believes Trump’s falsehoods about fraud.
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