By Brian Massie, A Watchman on the Wall
Leonard Gilbert and I had a meeting with the Lake County Board of Election’s Director, Dante Lewis, and Deputy Director, Amy Kistner. We would like to publicly thank them for taking the time to answer our questions and listen to what is being alleged about Ohio’s voter database and election integrity.
Full disclosure: Leonard and I have been poll workers for many years and are huge supporters of the Lake County Board of Elections.
- The first item we discussed was the standard voter registration form:
We asked if any agency or non-profit that collects voter registration forms are required to ask for any proof of citizenship from the individual registering to vote.
The answer was NO.
If the form is signed illegally, the individual would be guilty of election falsification. They could be charged with a felon in the fifth degree.
https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-3599.36
It is our opinion that this is a HUGE mistake by the State of Ohio legislators and the Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose. It seems logical to us that all potential new voters MUST show proof of citizenship BEFORE their name is added to the voter rolls.
It is our understanding that the U.S. House of representatives passed a bill that would require individuals registering to vote to provide proof of citizenship to
participate in federal elections. It passed 221-198. It would also require states
to check their voter rolls for registered noncitizens. The SAVE (Safeguard
American Voter Eligibility Act), is intended to prevent noncitizens from voting.
That act is already Illegal, since under current U.S. law, only citizens can vote in
federal elections, but the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 prohibits
states from confirming citizenship status.
Mr. Lewis and Ms. Kistner told us that the Secretary of State does have a procedure to identify and remove non-citizens who have already been registered to vote.
They use SAVE, and the Bureau of Motor Vehicle’s databases as cross-checks. SAVE is an online service for registered federal, state, territorial, tribal, and local government agencies to verify immigration status and naturalized/acquired U.S. citizenship of applicants seeking benefits or licenses.
Here are two directives recently issued by the Secretary of State Frank LaRose dealing with Removal of Non-Citizens from Voter Registration Databases:
By cross checking with SAVE and BMV records, Ohio was able to remove non-citizens who had been registered in the system.
Here is a press release issued by the Secretary of State’s office on August 1, 2024:
| SECRETARY LAROSE ANNOUNCES LATEST ACTION IN STATEWIDE VOTER REGISTRATION INTEGRITY AUDIT, ORDERS REMOVAL OF 499 NON-CITIZEN REGISTRATIONS (Columbus) – Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced today that county boards of elections are being directed to remove an additional 499 non-citizen registrations from Ohio’s voter rolls. The latest action comes as part of a multi-phase, comprehensive audit of the statewide voter registration database ahead of the November general election. “I swore an oath to uphold the constitution of our state, and that document clearly states that only United States citizens can participate in Ohio elections,” said Secretary LaRose. “That means I’m duty-bound to make sure people who haven’t yet earned citizenship in this country aren’t voting. If or when they do become citizens, I’ll be the first one to congratulate them and welcome them to the franchise, but until then the law requires us to remove ineligible registrations to prevent illegal voting.” In May, the Secretary of State’s Public Integrity Division and Office of Data Analytics and Archives initiated a review of voter records for compliance with Ohio’s constitutional citizenship requirement. Using identification records provided by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV), the office found 136 voter registrations assigned to Ohio residents who twice confirmed their non-citizenship status to the BMV. Eighty of those individuals failed to respond to notices asking that they either confirm their citizenship status or cancel their registration, and boards are initiating the removal of those registrations. The latest removals announced today include individuals who confirmed their non-citizen status to the BMV, and a subsequent review of the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database system has confirmed them to be non-citizens. These individuals failed to respond to notices from the Secretary of State’s office asking that they either confirm their citizenship status or cancel their registration. Any individual whose registration is removed pursuant to the Secretary’s directive can submit a provisional ballot, which will be counted upon proof of citizenship. “I want to give these folks the benefit of the doubt and say that most of them didn’t intend to break the law,” said LaRose. “We want to make sure a mistaken registration doesn’t become an illegal vote. We also want to make sure that lawfully registered citizens can participate seamlessly in the process, especially if their citizenship status changed recently.” Secretary LaRose added that investigations into the citizenship status of voter registration records remain ongoing, and additional removals may be ordered ahead of the November general election. The office’s Election Integrity Unit also will refer cases for criminal prosecution. Election integrity remains an ongoing priority for the Secretary of State’s office, which continues to be a national leader in ensuring the honesty and accuracy of voter rolls. At the direction of Secretary LaRose, boards completed last week the removal of nearly 155,000 registrations confirmed to be abandoned and inactive for at least four consecutive years. Many of the registrations became eligible for removal due to an address change, where the voter both failed to cancel their old registration as well as respond to a notice asking for confirmation of the registration’s status. The office also recently deployed a new digital dashboard tool to help county election officials better identify voter registration discrepancies, such as illegal characters in name fields, placeholder birth dates, unreasonably high ages, and improper birth/registration date combinations. |
Why does all of this matter? We will let Tom Zawistowski of We The People Convention tell you what could happen in the November election. (As a side note, we processed the video on Rumble.com because Youtube.com does not permit us any discussion on election integrity.)
One last item for the election integrity issue in the State of Ohio. We recorded U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno on August 27, 2024 at a fundraiser held at the Cask 307 winery in Madison, Ohio. Here is a short video of Bernie expressing his views on election integrity in the State of Ohio:
2. We received a notification from a Lake County resident that they received an incorrect acknowledgment notice from the Lake County Board of Elections. A Lake County resident had changed his address, and the standard policy is to send out the acknowledgement notice that the BOE had received and accepted the change. However, the Board of Elections inadvertently entered his new address incorrectly causing the notice to be sent to the wrong address. It was simply a human error.
3. There is a group known as Black Fork Strategies that registers people to vote.
https://blackfork.org/
Mr. Lewis informed us that Black Fork had submitted 12 new voter registration forms to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, who then sent the registration forms to the Lake County Board of Elections. The Lake County BOE does check the information on the forms; confirms that the person exists, and the address and signature are valid. Without those verifications the individual is not entered into the Lake County voter database.
However, the Lake County Board of Elections cannot verify that the person is a citizen.
It should also be noted that even though the BMV and the Board of Elections are separate entities, there does exist immediate cross checks as needed to confirm voter eligibility, but not citizenship.
4. We informed Mr. Lewis about the allegation made by Mr. Jerome Corsi that there is a deceptive computer algorithm in the State’s system that can impact the outcome of an election. Mr. Corsi was on the Ohio Political News Podcast two weeks ago to explain their findings. We will reserve judgment until after the Secretary of State weighs in on this issue. We are concerned that it may follow the same path as the Dr. Doug Frank and Conan Hayes fiasco during the 2020 elections. If the reader is interested they can view our past articles on our involvement with Dr. Frank. Here is the Corsi video:
5. Mr. Lewis confirmed that Lake County’s election system is on an independent, stand-alone computer system. It is not tied in with any other computer network.
Lake County does have a “paper ballot” system. The voting machine will automatically generate a paper ballot that can be reviewed by the voter before it is submitted to a tabulator that counts the votes. The BOE does a manually count of a percentage of the ballots cast to ensure accuracy in the machine totals.
We want to make it clear that there is no such thing as the perfect system when humans are involved. However, based on this discussion of the current state and historical trends, and working the election polls for many years, Leonard and I believe that the BOE has a system with sufficient checks and balances with additional safeguards (within their control) to ensure free, fair and accurate
elections in Lake County.
The issue dealing with the citizenship verification is an issue for the State legislators and the Secretary of State, Frank LaRose. It is our opinion that is a huge hole in our State’s election integrity, but it cannot be solved by the local Board of Elections.
We say thank you to all the Lake County Board of Elections staff, and the more than 700 volunteers that help during the elections. It is truly remarkable what they are able to do each an every election cycle.
Categories: Lake, Lake County Politics, Uncategorized