Licking County Elections Board responds to concerns about group that asked it to cancel voter registrations

The Licking County Board of Elections responded on Monday to concerns about an organization that asked the board to cancel registrations for voters who the organization said it believes are registered to vote in two states.

And despite staff recommendations against it, the board also voted during its meeting on Monday, Aug. 5, that during early voting this fall, and on Election Day, the images of county commissioners in the lobby of the County Administration Building  will be covered or removed so that they are not perceived as campaign material.

Brian Mead, director of the Board of Elections, told the board that its response to requests by an organization that calls itself the “Ohio Election Integrity Network” (OEIN) had been misunderstood by some people who responded with harsh and unfair criticism.

Mead and board members Dave Rhodes and Kaye Hartman were particularly upset that some people perceived their willingness to listen to OEIN representatives and accept information from them as “collaborating” with or turning over board duties to an outside organization.

“This board has always made decisions based on the best interests of the voters of Licking County,” Hartman said, adding that the board viewed the requests and information provided by OEIN the same as it would any others that come from the public.

Mead said he felt like “we were made a pawn in an effort to push the secretary of state” to take action regarding OEIN’s activities in Ohio.

A June 12 story by The Reporting Project reported that at the same time the state was considering removing 2,185 inactive Licking County voters from the rolls in a controversial process of “cleaning up” the registration list, the OEIN was asking the board to consider removing 292 people who the network’s leaders said were registered to vote in Licking County and in another state.

Mead said that some people conflated those two things and thought that the OEIN was asking the board to remove more than 2,000 Licking County voters from the rolls.

The 2,149 Licking County voters ultimately removed from the rolls were affected by a state-mandated review of registrations to remove voters who have moved and not updated their registration or have not participated in elections during the past four years. The Licking Countians were among 154,995 inactive Ohio voters removed in July.

The state gave voters on its list an opportunity to update their registrations, and 3,862 did so, including 36 from Licking County. Those who were purged or have not yet registered to vote have until Oct. 7 to register if they want to vote in the Nov. 5 presidential election. To see whether you were purged, go to the Ohio Secretary of State’s website: https://registrationreadiness.ohiosos.gov/#. Licking County residents can check this list of purged registrations:

The request from the OEIN to remove voters from the Licking County rolls was not automatically granted. Instead, the Elections Board voted twice this year to review data obtained by OEIN that suggested some voters might be registered in two states.

Board chair Freddie Latella and member Hartman, who are Democrats, and Republican Rhodes voted in June to accept information from the OEIN that indicated 292 people were registered to vote in Licking County and in another state, and to send them letters asking them to pick a state and sign a form canceling their Ohio registration if they intended to vote elsewhere in the future. Republican Park Shai was absent from the June meeting and from the Monday, Aug. 5, meeting.

Earlier this year, Mead said, the board sent letters to 250 people and 77 of them sent back forms requesting that their registration be removed from the voter rolls in Licking County. And 59 from the second group of 292 sent back forms requesting removal.

The OEIN is using materials and data generated by the national Election Integrity Network, which is led by Cleta Mitchell, an election attorney who, after former President Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in 2020, was part of a legal team in Georgia that sought to reverse the 2020 election results there and across the country. Mitchell was on the phone call when Trump asked the Georgia secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes” he would need to give him a win in that state.

The OEIN is operating in about two-thirds of Ohio’s 88 counties, according to Vicki McKinney, an Ohio Election Integrity Network board member from Johnstown and a member of the group’s Licking County Task Force.

After the June board meeting, the League of Women Voters of Licking County raised questions about the relationship between the OEIN and the local elections board, and about where OEIN obtains data it uses to raise questions about registrations. And three other organizations – the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, Common Cause Ohio and All Voting is Local Ohio – held a news conference in Columbus and asked Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose in a July 11 letter to “take appropriate steps to safeguard the voting rights of all eligible citizens by issuing a directive to county boards on list management that ignores private entities that call into question their fellow voters.”

The Licking County Board of Elections approved a letter Monday responding to the League of Women Voters, saying, in part: “We’d like to first address one serious concern we have, and that is the characterization of our interactions with the OEIN as ‘collaborating,’ ‘working with,’ and ‘use (of) a private organization’ to do the work of board staff. Their initial request was for the Licking County Board of Elections to outright cancel the registrations of 248 voters they brought to us. The director and deputy director immediately and flatly refused to do this, as it would have constituted actually collaborating with an outside agency to remove voters without due process.

“After further discussion,” the letter says, “the directors suggested that the OEIN ask the board to send a letter to the voters listed, asking them if they had moved out of state, and if so, to please cancel their Licking County registration” by signing an enclosed form and returning it.

The board said it was “satisfied that we would be able to identify any voters erroneously included in their (OEIN) list before mailing the letters, which we did by cross-referencing their list with our most current registration information.”

The board referred the League to OEIN for answers to questions about its data collection methods.

Photos and video to be removed

James Snedden, a Democrat running for county commissioner, had asked the Elections Board in April to remove photos and a streaming video that include images of commissioners Tim Bubb, of Heath, and Duane Flowers, of Hanover, both Republicans seeking re-election. Snedden, of St. Louisville, is running for Bubb’s seat and Flowers is being challenged by Democrat Bryn Bird of Granville.

Snedden said in a complaint to the Elections Board that photos of the commissioners in the building’s lobby near the Elections Board office amounted to free advertising for the commissioners during their campaigns.

Hartman said it made sense to remove the photos and streaming video because the administration building at 20 S. 2nd St. in Newark will serve as the county’s Early Voting Center from Oct. 8 through Nov. 3, and will be a polling place on Election Day, Nov. 5.

Mead, the Elections Board director, provided the board with an opinion from the county prosecutor’s office, which serves as the board’s attorney, saying that “there is no legal reason” to remove the images.

“The pictures of the commissioners would not be campaign literature nor would the video feed,” wrote Josh Kunkel, assistant prosecuting attorney, citing state law. “There is nothing that directs electors to vote for a certain candidate, and these things are not trying to persuade an elector. The photos and video feed are at the county building all year and not just during election season.”

Kunkel wrote in his memo to the board that “although it is possible an elector could be persuaded by the presence of these things, the law does not consider all possibilities. As long as the commissioners are not interacting with electors casting ballots during the early voting period, there is no reason why the photos and video feed would need to be removed.”

Based on that opinion and concerns about setting a precedent that could be used as an argument to remove images of incumbents in township buildings, city halls and school board offices, Mead recommended that the board not approve the request.

In making a motion to approve the request, Hartman said, “It’s a matter of perception,” and some people might perceive the photos as campaign material.

Mead said he spoke with the commissioners, who said they would abide by whatever the board decided.

Alan Miller writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.