Grand juries throughout the state indicted six Ohioans with illegal voting in earlier elections, a fourth-degree felony.
Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, announced the six indictments exactly two weeks from Election Day 2024, from more than 600 cases re-referred to his office.
Three cases are in Franklin County and the other three cases are in Cuyahoga, Summit and Portage County, all in northeast Ohio. In all six, the indicted individuals are accused of voting at least once between 2008 and 2020 even though they were not U.S. citizens then. Five of the six people were permanent residents with green cards.
“This is a very small number of cases,” Yost said. “Voting irregularities like this are rare.”
Non-citizens aren’t allowed to vote, according to the Ohio Constitution, and if they do, Yost said they can be held liable even if they didn’t know that they were breaking the law at that time.
“We don't have many strict liability offenses because what that says is if you did it, it doesn't matter what you knew, what you thought, what you intended to do. You are strictly liable,” he said. “The General Assembly created a strict liability offense here when it comes to illegal voting.”
The Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI), an arm of Yost's office, investigated the cases after Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, re-referred them earlier this year. At the time, LaRose chided the state's county prosecutors for not further pursuing the cases. Prosecutors had said many of the referrals lacked the minimal evidence needed to pursue charges.
More than 600 cases of registration and voting irregularities were re-referred to Yost in August. Of that total, 138 were thought to have involved improper voting. Most of the other cases referred involved improper registration, over which Yost's office does not have authority.
A grand jury in Lorain County declined to indict in a seventh case of an Oberlin College student who had been accused of voting in both Ohio and Washington state, citing a lack of evidence.
Though prison time is a possible illegal voting penalty, Yost said he didn't believe any of the present cases would result in that sort of sentence.
“We won't know that until we get to court and hear what the defendant has to say, assuming, of course, that there's a conviction,” Yost said.
A dashboard from LaRose's office shows 8,160,184 residents are registered to vote in Ohio.
