Incoming Dem Ohio Secretary of State will do what she can to roll back GOP voting restrictions

As Democrats swept to historic victories Tuesday, a win in the Ohio Secretary of State race might start the process of rolling back years of Republican restrictions on voting that were predicated on voter fraud that didn’t exist.

Allison Russo, a member of the state House of Representatives, defeated Republican Robert Sprague by 3.5 percentage points to become secretary of state, the office that oversees Ohio’s elections and business registration.

Now she has a chance to continue a fight she began while she was in the legislature — to protect voting access for Ohioans.

“The thing that motivated me (to run) was understanding how important this office is for voting rights and for access to our elections,” Russo said in a phone interview. “I’ve known for a long time that this is an office I wanted to run for, and that we needed someone there to be an advocate for voters and voting.”

She was elected as part of a rout that broke total Republican control statewide offices in Ohio and left the GOP with only one statewide, non-judicial office — that of state auditor. 

As the GOP gained power in Ohio over the past 20 years, its leaders have entrenched that power through measures that critics said were antidemocratic. 

They severely gerrymandered the state legislature and Ohio’s congressional districts and then ignored seven orders of the Ohio Supreme Court saying that the gerrymanders were unconstitutional. 

And outgoing Secretary Frank LaRose repeatedly ratcheted down voting access on claims that the goal was to fight voter fraud. Yet his office’s own numbers demonstrated that it only might have happened 0.0005% of the time in the 2020 election. 

And more recent reporting for the Capital Journal shows there have been just nine convictions for illegal voting out of 35 million votes. That’s 0.0000003 convictions per vote cast.

Nevertheless, LaRose implemented rules and Republicans passed laws that shortened the early voting calendar, shortened deadlines around absentee voting and restricted the number of drop boxes and early-voting sites to one per county — regardless of whether the county is home to millions who tend to vote for Democrats or just 13,000 who tend to vote for Republicans.

Ohio Republicans also enacted one of the strictest voter ID laws in the United States.

All of those things culminated in the last night of early voting in Columbus, where voters had to stand in line for at least an hour after the polls had officially closed.

Russo said such waits are unacceptable, but as secretary of state, she has to deal with the law as it is.

“We have to work with existing state law whether I like that existing state law or not,” she said. “That said, we have a secretary of state (LaRose) who we’ve seen go beyond the plain language of the law and sometimes make existing, unfavorable law even worse. 

“So we are going to be looking very closely at the directives that have been previously issued. We’re going to work with our local elections officials to understand which ones are problematic to implement because they’re unclear, the legality may be problematic, or there are resource issues. That will be one of the first orders of business.”

As for drop boxes and early voting sites and hours, Russo said she’ll do what she can.

“There is some discretion for the secretary of state over the hours and how you use those days and the hours that are available to voters,” she said. “We’re going to be looking at what we can do there, because I share the concern that many Ohioans had when they saw those long lines. We do not want voters to be discouraged if they show up. And they should not have to wait that long.”

The secretary of state also has considerable power over the mechanics of citizen-initiated laws and constitutional amendments. She ensures they follow the single-subject rule and otherwise pass legal muster — including by verifying petition signatures.

And crucially, she proposes the language that will appear on the ballot to the Ohio Ballot Board.

In 2024, a group led by former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Maureen O’Connor, a Republican, proposed a constitutional amendment that sought to end gerrymandering by creating an independent, bipartisan panel to draw legislative and congressional districts. 

LaRose proposed three pages of ballot language with a title claiming that under the amendment, the panel was “required to gerrymander” the districts. Republicans on the ballot board adopted the language and the amendment failed in the same election that gained Donald Trump a second term as president.

There has been talk of trying to get a similar amendment on the ballot ahead of the 2030 census. Russo said it could be one of several in the next two years.

“I suspect there will be a number of ballot issues that will come forward over the next couple of years to address many of these concerns that voters have in this space,” she said. “Whether it be redistricting (or gerrymandering) reform, or voting rights — or it could be education funding — I suspect it will be a number of issues. As secretary of state, my involvement will be when those issues come forward.”

Would she commit to proposing straightforward, unbiased ballot language regardless of the content of the statute or amendment?

“Absolutely,” Russo said. “I talked a lot about that on the campaign trail — the need to have a more transparent process with ballot language. There has to be ample public notice about the ballot language to keep it simple and clear and easily understood. 

“Because listen, when you complicate ballot language, not only does it confuse voters, it also contributes to these long lines when voters have to stand there and read a lot of language and try to comprehend what it means.”