Ohio Sec. of State LaRose refers progressive group to federal law enforcement

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose is asking federal law enforcement to investigate another progressive voter engagement group, accusing them of missing key deadlines and doing “sloppy” work.

“Ohio is the gold standard for elections for a reason,” LaRose said during a press conference Tuesday.

A week until Election Day on Tuesday, Nov. 3, the secretary said a progressive registration group could be hurting voters.

“When a group like that accepts the responsibility of registering people to vote, there are legal consequences that come with that,” he said.

He has referred voter engagement group Field Forward Ohio to local law enforcement as well as the Department of Justice for what he calls registration offenses.

Ohio law requires groups registering voters to submit those completed forms to their local boards of elections within 10 days. According to LaRose, at the final deadline on Oct. 5, the group submitted thousands of registrations.

“Registration forms coming in from this particular group that included registrations that were not only more than 10 days old, but in some cases months old,” he said.

The Franklin County Board of Elections told us that they received about 600 registrations that were past the 10-day window. The board provided the sheet it sent LaRose, which cited several other problems.

Of the recent Field Forward Ohio registrations in Franklin County, an additional 16 were noncitizens, four were deceased and three didn’t live at the listed addresses. None are on the voter rolls.

There were also late-delivered voter registration applications in Summit, Stark, Hamilton, Wayne and Jackson counties.

“That person that filled out a voter registration form way back in August was expecting that it would be turned in within 10 days,” LaRose said. “And for example, if that person later signed a petition, their petition signature would not have been valid because they weren’t actually registered within the 10 days that the law allows.”

Field Forward Ohio gave a statement, saying, in part, that they hold themselves “to the highest standards.”

“This failure violates our policies and procedures and is antithetical to our organization’s mission,” the statement said.

Nonpartisan Case Western Reserve University elections law professor Atiba Ellis said he would think the first step would be for Ohio law enforcement is to finish investigating, not skip right to the feds.

“Turning innocent errors into a felonious prosecution seems to be overkill,” Ellis said.

LaRose points out that Field Forward Ohio is part of Black Fork Strategies. In 2024, he referred them to local officials for allegations that they submitted fraudulent voter registrations.

“Do you think that their history shows that there might be a wider issue when it comes to their behavior?” we asked LaRose.

“Yeah… Now I don’t know whether it’s intentional or negligent, whatever — but we’ve seen a history of sloppiness with this particular group,” the secretary responded.

The group’s owner is also the founder of Ohio Organizing Collaborative, which was raided by the FBI this summer. Democrats say that Republicans have routinely tried to disenfranchise voters.

“I’m worried this isn’t just about an investigation into one organization,” U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown, a Democrat representing District 11, said at a press conference in June. “It was an attempt to send a message to a specific community.”

LaRose said he wants groups to understand that this is serious, and there could be either charges or sanctions for the group.

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This article was originally published on News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content-sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ articles, it is not available for free republication by other news outlets as it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland.