TOLEDO, Ohio — WTOL 11 Reporter Amy Steigerwald interviewed Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose Monday about the election process in the state this year. During their 15-minute interview, Steigerwald addressed Ohio voters' main questions and concerns.
Amy Steigerwald: First, obviously, today is a big day. It's the last day to register to vote in Ohio. I guess. What are your thoughts on how things are going so far?
Sec. Frank LaRose: You know, it's more challenging this year to get people registered to vote because you can't go out as easily with clipboards and that kind of thing. So, we've been trying to find all kinds of creative ways to get people registered to vote. We've partnered with the Ohio Craft Brewing Association to put right there on cans and bottles of craft beer in over 50 brewers throughout the state. We've worked with barbershops and beauty salons to put posters up. We've got a barber here in Columbus that has registered over 2,000 voters at his barbershop. So, a lot of cool things happening. I know that groups like the League of Women Voters are out there doing voter registration on college campuses, both the college Republicans and college Democrats are working to do that. And it's working. In fact, this weekend, we went over a big number for the first time ever.
We surpassed 8 million registered voters in the state of Ohio, and that's really exciting. I'm so excited to see that. And that tells me that Ohioans are going to make their voice heard. And it's easier than ever to get registered online at vote.ohio.gov. All you gotta do is have your state ID or driver's license. You go to vote ohio.gov and you get registered there. And if you want to do it in-person, or if you don't want to use the internet, you can go to your county board of elections and I've ordered them all to stay open until today until 9:00 p.m.tonight (Monday, Oct. 5). They'll all be there until 9:00 p.m. If you want to go to your county board of elections and get registered, you can do it that way as well.
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Amy Steigerwald: This year, the way things are running is very different. But if you had to narrow it down to one biggest issue you have been seeing so far, what would it be?
Sec. Frank LaRose: Our focus continues to be on poll worker recruitment. We need to have 55,000 trained Ohioans ready to go to run these polling locations. The bare minimum is 37,000, just to open 4,000 polling locations. We need 37,000 Ohioans. I'm happy to report that we've already had 46,000 sign up. But what that means is that we still have more to go to make sure that we've got that reserve force trained and ready. And so we're asking Ohioans to go to vote.ohio.gov, where you can sign up to be a poll worker. Here's what will happen next. Your county board of elections will give you a call. They'll schedule you for training. They'll assign you to a polling location or assign you to be one of those reserve force poll workers, ready to go on Tuesday, Nov. 3, if we need to call you into the game.
Amy Steigerwald: On a press conference about a month ago, you talked about the revamp of the secretary of state's website and how it has that been helping people get registered to vote easier. How is that going?
Sec. Frank LaRose: So we've made vote.ohio.gov the one-stop-shop for everything you need to know for elections. And in a time where there's a lot of untrustworthy information, unfortunately, out there on the internet, we're emphasizing that the trusted source for elections information is to go to the official .gov website, vote.ohio.gov, there you can get registered to vote. You can sign up to be a poll worker. You can find out how to request an absentee ballot and so much more. So, vote.ohio.gov is the place to go.
Amy Steigerwald: Absentee ballots. There's been a lot of people calling into question how safe they are and how they're going to work in this election, especially with the problems we've been having with USPS. Can you talk to me a little bit about how safe absentee ballots are in Ohio and what county boards of elections do to make sure all those votes get counted?
Sec. Frank LaRose: There's a lot of noise out there. It has created confusion. Here's what Ohioans should know. For close to 20 years, both Republicans and Democrats have been voting absentee. It's a safe and trustworthy process. We have important safeguards in place. Like for example, we maintain accurate voter rolls in Ohio. You have to prove your identity when you request a ballot and then prove your identity again when you mail the ballot back in. Ohioans can track their ballot to make sure it's received at the board of elections. So, just like you would track a package you order online, you can go to vote.ohio.gov and actually track your ballot. And so Ohioans know and trust absentee voting. And by the way, here's what proves that. Over 2 million Ohioans have already requested their absentee ballot. That shows you that they know that this is a safe and secure way to vote.
As it relates to the postal service, especially in the Toledo area, we know that there had been some concern about the Toledo area mail being shipped to Detroit and that taking some extra time. We've worked with the postal service. I've had several conversations with the U.S. postmaster general and others from the U.S. Postal Service. They've made it clear that election mail is their top priority. We're going to now hold them to account, to actually deliver on that promise. They've committed to moving election mail sorting instead of sending it all the way up to Detroit, they're going to keep it here in Ohio. They've committed to doing what's called an all-clear procedure, where they're going to go through those sorting facilities each day and make sure that no election-related mail is still sitting around. And they've also worked to establish relationships at the local level.
So, each county board of elections is getting to know their local postal carriers and their local postmaster to make sure that they exchange cell phone numbers and can work very closely together. So, the postal service said that election mail is their top priority. We're going to hold them to account on that. Ohioans trust voting by mail. But if you don't want to vote by mail, if you still want to vote absentee, but you don't want to mail it back, there's another option for you. Ohioans can return their ballot directly to the board of elections. Every county board of elections has a secure 24/7 drop box. By the way, this was the first time ever in a general election that's been the case in Ohio. And so, it's easier to vote than it's ever been and easier to vote absentee than it's ever been.
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Amy Steigerwald: About those dropboxes I know there has been some kind of back and forth on whether or not counties will have more than one. Will you allow each county to have more than one box? I know Lucas County commissioners and other county officials in Ohio have been calling for additional drop boxes.
Sec. Frank LaRose: So, here's what we're going to do to make sure that we're not creating confusion right before an election. We know that early voting begins tomorrow. Ohioans are already going to be starting to return their absentee ballots tomorrow. Every county board of elections is going to have drop boxes there, at their county board of elections. They can have more than one at that location, but what we're not going to do is expand it beyond that location. This is a question for the general assembly to take up. I've actually had conversations already this morning with both the speaker of the House and the president of the Senate. I think this is something important for the general assembly to create in law, so that there's no confusion about this going forward. But let's not be distracted by this. That's never been the thing that we've really needed to focus on. Ohioans know that the way that you return an absentee ballot is you mail it back in. If you don't want to mail it back in, you can return it to the board of elections. That's the way that Ohioans have done it for a long time. We're keeping our eye on the ball and reminding Ohioans that it's convenient to vote in Ohio, whether it's absentee, whether it's early voting, or whether it's in-person Election Day voting. There's no good excuse for not making your voice heard in Ohio.
Amy Steigerwald: Do you think moving forward in the future, there could be an opportunity to have more than one drop box in each county and at different locations?
Sec. Frank LaRose: I've already said very clearly that that's a public policy matter that I think is a fine idea, but it has to be taken up by the general assembly. I don't think that the secretary of state on his own should be making policy like that. I'm not a lawmaker. I used to serve in the state Senate. But now, it's up to the members of the state House, the state Senate to make the policies. As it relates to election, I carry out the state legislatures' wishes and operate with the boards of elections to make sure that we can do so in a fair and secure way.
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Amy Steigerwald: Signature validations. Could you explain what they are, who does them and how those work?
Sec. Frank LaRose: This is an interesting thing that has been a part of elections in Ohio, really, since the beginning of our state. When somebody requests a ballot, the signature has to match when they send back their ballot. The signature has to match. We use signature matching for people signing petitions. Signature matching is a well-understood process. And by the way, it's all done in a bipartisan way. So, if there is a signature that's going to be rejected for mismatching, it is voted on by both the Republicans and the Democrats who serve on your county board of elections. Now, the good news is this, signature mismatches are exceedingly rare. I think in the year 2016, there were something like 700 ballots that were rejected because of a mismatching signature. And so that's exceedingly rare, but it is an important safeguard that exists and will continue to exist in Ohio.
Amy Steigerwald: When it comes to voter fraud, what is the last instance of voter fraud you can recall here in Ohio?
Sec. Frank LaRose: Oh, goodness. You know, we had a small number of prosecutions several months ago that we referred to county prosecutors and to the attorney general for people that had tried to vote more than once or in some cases had voted more than once, in Ohio and in another state. But it's such a tiny fraction of a percent, voter fraud is exceedingly rare. The reason it's rare though is because we've got good laws in place to keep it rare. And so when you hear people out there claiming that there's rampant, widespread voter fraud, it's just not true. Voter fraud is rare, but we work to keep it rare by enforcing the laws we have on the books.
Amy Steigerwald: In the event of a vote that doesn't get counted, is that typically a human error or computer error?
Sec. Frank LaRose: It's almost always a human error. And this is why we've redesigned the instruction forms. By the way, we worked with a group called the Center for Civic Design. And so when you request an absentee ballot now, when you get it, it's going to come with an all-new instruction sheet that lays out very clearly how to return it, how to avoid those errors. Honestly, the most common error is somebody forgetting to put their birthday. They'll put today's date instead of their birthday. So we've made it even clearer and bolder that it's your birthday, not today's date that needs to go in that birthday line. But here's the good news. If you make a mistake, as long as you send it back soon...And by the way, this is one of the reasons why we're encouraging voters not to procrastinate. Once the board of elections gets it and they find that mistake, they can call you and get it corrected. They can email you and get it corrected. That's why we ask you to put your email address and your cell phone number, or your home phone number right there on the absentee ballot request form because the boards of elections want your vote to count. The boards of elections aren't there to try to keep people from voting. The boards are there to try to help people vote. And so, they're going to work with voters to make sure that if they made an error, that can get corrected.
Amy Steigerwald: In the past couple of elections, we have seen a lot more election projections and where certain candidates stand in the race. Do you think those polls that national outlets release, influence people's votes? And, in a perfect world, if you were the one to decide, how would you have the press report on those polls?
Sec. Frank LaRose: Well, you know, I think that the First Amendment protects the right of journalists to report how they see fit. And polling is part of that. I think any of us that have ever kind of looked under the Christmas tree to try to figure out what we're getting, none of us like to wait for that result, right? And that includes voting. And so we love polls. We want to know where things are heading. People are interested in that, but here's what's important. We need to be very thoughtful about how we report on election night because election night is always just a snapshot in time. What we report on election night is always the unofficial result. And so this idea that election night is sort of this reality TV thing, where you're going to get to go to bed that night, knowing who won and who lost that may not be the case.
It may not be fully conclusive because what we're going to report on election night is every absentee ballot that's come in up until 7:30, every early vote ballot that's come in. And every Election Day ballot, we're going to report all those as quickly as we can and wait, it may go into the wee hours of Wednesday morning. But we're going to report that number, but it's always just the unofficial number because there are still 10 days for ballots to continue coming in as long as they were postmarked by Monday, Nov. 2. And so here's something new that we're changing about the way that we're doing election night reporting. We're featuring right there at the top of the website the number of outstanding absentee ballots. Here's why that matters. That's a knowable number. We know how many ballots we mailed out, and we know how many ballots have come back.
And it's important for folks to know that there are still a number of outstanding balance. And so here's a hypothetical. Say your favorite candidate is ahead by a million votes on election night, and there are 200,000 outstanding absentee ballots. Well, you know, that you can call it at that point, numerically, that contest is over. But the flip side, if your favorite candidates ahead by a hundred thousand votes, and there are 200,000 outstanding absentees, well then just by definition, that contest is not over yet. And any candidate that tried to declare victory based on those scenarios would look foolish for doing so. So, it's important for people to kind of have that civics lesson and understand the way election night reporting really works.
Amy Steigerwald: Our president is in the hospital being treated for COVID-19. What if there's a situation in Ohio where Trump or any candidate is unable to run for president or for a certain office and the ballots are already printed? What does that process look like?
Sec. Frank LaRose: Well, of course, we keep the president and first lady in our prayers as well as the journalists and staff members that have been infected, and any Ohioan, any American who's been infected with COVID-19. Of course, the U.S. Constitution and the federal laws layout how candidates can be replaced. Generally, it's something that the parties do. But again, there are a lot of legal scholars that want to debate this. There are a number of interesting articles about it. But of course, we expect, and we pray that the president has a full recovery and can stand for election. Because again, that's what the voters in the Republican primary chose him to be there. (...) And we want everybody to be healthy throughout this process, but it's an interesting, constitutional and legal question for sure. And there are a lot of fun articles out there that kind of layout all these different scenarios for what happens up to Election Day or after Election Day, or even up until the oath of office is taken in January.
Amy Steigerwald: So, there is no clear-cut process on what happens to those ballots then?
Sec. Frank LaRose: Those are already printed in Ohio. So reprinting ballots at this point is not going to happen. And again, God forbid, if any candidate was to be unable to stand for election because of health reasons or whatever else, then there are processes in place, where generally the party will announce the replacement for that candidate. But again, it's depending on the timeline of where you are, and I'm not a legal or constitutional scholar, so I'm not going to get too far out over my skis on that.
Amy Steigerwald: What are the exact rules when it comes to signs at polling places?
Sec. Frank LaRose: What the law says is that there is a 100-foot buffer around every polling location, and you're not allowed to do any campaigning inside that buffer, which you're not supposed to wear your favorite candidate's hat, or shirt, or button, or carry a sign inside. That's something that our poll workers enforce to make sure that people aren't violating that 100-foot buffer. Outside of that, of course, the First Amendment is in full effect, people can campaign all they want. But what you can never do is obstruct or delay or block a voter. That's something that we would never tolerate. And we've already made it very clear, by the way, in a memo that we've sent out to law enforcement all over the state of Ohio, what their responsibilities are to help us and to help their county board of elections maintain that flow so that voters can come and go from their polling location completely unobstructed. But inside of a polling location, no campaigning. So leave your favorite candidate's hat, or shirt, at home when you go to vote.
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