Bill Cunningham, the Great America and welcome with glorious Thursday afternoon the tri State. The weather should break, we're told by Channel nine sometime the next day or two Saturdays should be nicer. I was in Anderson Township last night. It rained like crazy for two hours, as hard as it can rain, and where I lived got absolutely no rain, but a little bit unusual. Reds Baseball first pitch tonight is five ten, getting it over quickly. I assume, like
last night's game, Thomas Rhett, it's the big concert. I'm sir Franklin Rose. Franklerose is a big fan of Thomas Rhett. In fact, Secretary of State, frank Larrose, have you ever heard of Thomas Rhett?
Heard of him? My taste is a little bit older when it comes to that.
Well, he's going to rock and roll with you, to pull It's a great country artist. Tonight after the game and the Reds play the Oakland A's hopefully better than the last two nights. First of all, talk about where we are in voting. I saw online that your office had found literally thousands and thousands of illegals that were registered to vote, which, of course never happens. Everyone is registered to vote is completely legitimate. I dare you to
question anyone's illegalities when it come to voting. But what did you find out, Secretary of State Frank LeRose, give me a full report.
Yeah, so we do take it seriously that only US citizens should be allowed to participate in American elections. And it's what the Ohio Constitution requires, it's what state and federal law says, and so, yeah, we go through those checks. It's a multi layer process and it's harder than it should be because the federal government doesn't help us much with the databases that they have. They limit our access to those, but we use all the tools at our disposal.
We go through the voter rules and we identified not thousands, but several hundred non citizens who were registered to vote, and we have worked to remove them from the voter rules and also refer them forst because when you register to vote and you're not a US citizen, you violate the law. And we want people to know that if you mess around, you'll find out. Don't think that you can get away with registering to vote in Ohio as a non citizen. We will catch you and you will face justice for it.
In fact, to the state of Texas, the number is well north of one hundred thousand, might be as much as a million illegals registered to vote, and now the ACLU issuing the Attorney General in Texas for taking them off their roles. In the state of Ohio, how does a non citizen actually register to vote? How's that possible?
Well, it can happen a variety of different ways, sometimes really by no fault of their own. And I'll explain that when you go into a driver's license office to get your driver's license, to state BMV deputy register our office,
they'll sometimes hand you a voter registration form. We have found in some cases that non citizens, particularly with limited English proficiency, and of course they're here on legal status into get a driver's license, maybe they've got to work visa or a student visa or whatever else, they'll fill
that voter registration form out. Because when a government employee hands you a form, if you're grew up in a foreign country, you fill that thing out and they'll check the box that says, no, I am not a US citizen at about it. So really they've done nothing wrong. They filled the form out, honestly, But because of a data entry error by the team at the Board of Elections. Maybe they didn't look at it close enough and see that box that said no, I am not a citizen.
That's where you end up with a small percentage again, couple hundred out of eight million registered voters. Or in some cases it could be intentional, someone is actually trying to register to vote as a non citizen. Either way, it's a violation of the law. We give them a chance to fix it themselves. We send them a letter in the mail that says, according to our records, you
are a non citizen and registered to vote. If that's true, we're going to give you thirty days to withdraw your registration. If they don't take advantage of that, then yes, we remove them ourselves and we refer them for prosecution. You mentioned the ACLU and all of the allied liberal organizations. They always rush to the courthouse this time of year to try to change the way elections are run, and it's happening to me as well. It wouldn't surprise me if they come and sue us as it relates to
removing non citizens from the voter roles. But currently we're facing lawsuits from groups that don't want me to enforce a whole variety of Ohio's election integrity laws, including, by the way, our ban on foreign nationals funding elections. I've of course upheld that law, and there's a group that's suing me. We're actually expecting a decision in that case anytime now.
As far as what's happening in other states, you're very active with the other forty nine secretaries of state. When I talk to individuals in Nevada or Texas, they tell me that when you get your driver's license, don't have to be a citizen to get a driver's license, that
you're automatically registered to vote in Nevada. When I have on Tony Bender's good friend Wayne Allen Root, he tells me there's literally tens of thousands of Nevada AND's who are registered to vote because they have a driver's license. If you check a form whether you're a citizen or not, but no one pays attention there whether you're a citizen
or not, you get the ballot in the mail. So, assuming you're in Ohio and a non citizen gets a ballot in the mail, I think you're sending out real soon an application to get an absentee ballot for no reason at all. You can outdo that. Why is it not a crime if someone checks the box one way or another or makes a mistake and they actually vote. It seems to me there ought to be some cross reference with all kinds of databases from all the Secretaries
of States in the federal government. It could happen very quickly. So when you say the Feds aren't helping you, can you be more specific as to why Joe Biden, Kamala Harris doesn't help you. What is it they could do that they don't do well.
You hit a couple things here. First of all, Ohio's example to the rest of the country. There's a reason why I'm going to testify in Congress next week. They've asked me to come and testify. There's a reason why I was elected by my peers to be the chairman of the Republican Secretary's of State Committee. Nationally. I spoke at the Republican Lawyers Association just a couple of weeks ago about election integrity. The rest of the country views Ohio as an example of how to do this right.
You talked about driver's licenses in other states where they have automatic voter registration. That's problematic. We don't have automatic voter registration in Ohio. And what we do have is a great relationship with our Bureau of Motor Vehicles. The team over there works very well with us. In fact, they're one of the best tools we have to find
out who's a citizen and who's not. Because when you get a driver's license in Ohio, and to be clear, you must have legal status to get you are If you are an illegal alien, you cannot get a driver's license at Ohio. But when you go to get a
driver's license, you have to prove your status. You're either most of us don't remember when we got our first driver's license back at sixteen years old, but you have to bring your birth certificate when you do that right to prove identity, or if you are here on a student visa or on a work visa, you have to prove your legal status. So the Ohio Bureau Votor Vehicle knows without a doubt who's a citizen and who's not,
and they're one of the best tools we have. The federal government has access to other databases, and as I was mentioning, they're not forthcoming with those they charge us fees, they make it very difficult for us to access those databases. In fact, right now, I am considering legal action against the Biden administration because there are three databases that the Department of Homeland Security is supposed to give us access to.
I have been asking for access to those databases and they have thus far not granted that because we need all the tools that we can have to detect and remove non citizens from the voter rules to make sure that Ohio remains the gold standard for election integrity.
And almost makes you think the Biden administration wants illegals to vote. Now, other states have different state laws, So if the state law is different in Arizona, California, and Nevada, if the state law there is different, you would then have thousands of legal voting unless you have an aggressive secretary of state. Is that fair to say?
It's potentially that case. And this is why it's so important that people attention to Secretary of State raises and why it's so good that Ohio has chosen a conservative who's actually going to enforce the law. And that's what my team does each and every day. Election integrity matters and you know, this is something that I think Republicans and Democrats want us to do to uphold the law.
If you dive into the cesspool of social media from time to time, you will see all kinds of leftists insulting me for taking dead people off the voter rules, for taking non citizens off the voter roles. They say that I'm suppressing the vote and other things. Couldn't be the furthest from the truth. What we're actually doing. We're increasing voter participation because people want to participate in an election that they know is honest, and if they think
the election's not honest, they're more likely to skip it. Huh.
Secondly, what about Robert F. Kennedy Junior. Is he on the ballot in Ohio and the fact that he said he's not gonna accept he's not gonna win anyway, but he wants to be off the ballot. Is RFK Junior on the ballot in the state of.
Ohio, he will not be. He did qualify for the ballot, he got the right number of signatures, but I actually got a letter from him last week saying I wish to have my name removed from the ballot. He got that to us in time to do so. And so when we start printing out ballots, and by the way, we start sending out absentee ballots to our overseas and military personnel in just a.
Couple of weeks.
So people are going to start voting here very soon, and his name will not be on the ballot in Ohado.
Does this endorsement if Trump mean anything? Then legally in the state of Ohio, I would assume nothing except for political purposes. If someone might be persuaded who was a Kennedy voter to vote for Trump, but legally there will be no Kennedy on the ballot. Now, Tony Bender has a question. What if Tony Bender's unhappy with Trump and he's unhappy with Biden and wants to write in someone's name. He's thinking about writing my name in uh Is that legal? If you have a right in can you put someone
in there? And will that be counted?
It's a common misconception, and we get this every year where people write in all kinds of names. By the way, if you ever do decide to run for president, let me know I'll be the first one there to endorse you. Though. But you know, if you're not a certified right in candidate, that vote does not count. So what that means is you actually have to be a certified right in candidate. These are people that generally missed the deadline to get their name on or whatever else. Nobody's ever had a
chance of winning as a right in for president. But at the local level, for a city council race or school board race, sometimes right ends are successful. But you have to be a certified right in candidate. You can't just a voter. Can't just write in any old random name and expect that to receive a vote.
Now there goes my electoral hopes. But how do you become a certified ride in? What do you got to do? Become certified? If I want to become a certified right in, what do you have to do?
Yeah, there's a process where you have to submit some information to usually the county Board of Elections if you're running as a right in at the local level, or to us if you're seeking to run as a right in at the state wide level.
So, in other words, it's quite a Joe Deeters. A few years ago, we had a right in election for county prosecutor. Believe it or not, this is like ten fifteen years ago because the prosecutor in charge left off as quickly and so there was a write in. Joe Deeters Hamilton County won the prosecutor's office on a right in What are the odds of that happening? He won? Yeah, if you heard about what that says?
Something about theaters, that says something about his name, I d in campaigning. Now, if you have like a four syllable last name, I would encourage you not to try something like that.
Though, now so illegals, you're on it. RFK Jr. Was going to be on the ballot. He took his name off. He's going to be on the ballot in several states because the secretaries of states in those states did not have the authority to take him off the ballot once he's qualified. But you're saying, Ohio, he's going to be on five or six state ballots when Kennedy does want to be on the state ballot, but they had a state law that says you can't take him off. So he's going to be on the ballot, but Ohio is
not one of those states. Now, lastly, you told me off the air. You've been back like two or three days from army training. Explain what you've been doing the past two or three weeks. You were in the South and it was somewhat warm. Explain that.
Yeah, So I was actually down at what's now called Fort Liberty, North Carolina, used to be Fort Bragg. I think you know. I'm a reservist in the Army. I'm an East seven, which is a sergeant first class, and there's a required school called the Senior Leaders Course that I had to graduate from. So I was at the Special Warfare Center, which is where Green Berets go for
this kind of thing. And I'm happy to say, at forty five years old, I can still keep up with the young Green Berets, and so I guess I'm doing something right there.
So if you're called up, what does that mean? I mean that means the country's invaded or what do we do? I mean, this could be an ugly situation. Look what's happening in parts of the world and which invasions are taking place. If you're called up for duty, you'd be forty five years old doing what.
Well. Again, as a Green Beret and as a member of a special Forces unit, I do get quite a bit of flexibility with that, I generally work with my unit commander on a yearly basis to lay out my training schedule because they understand that I also have a responsibility to the citizens of Ohio. So there have been a number of members of Congress, even members of the US Senate over the years, statewide office holders who are
also reservists. Thankfully, the Defense Department understands that you have to balance your military obligation with your civilian obligations and in this case, my official responsibilities to the people of Ohio. So they give me some flexibility, but I get in the number of weeks I need every year, usually by helping support my unit with training and other things that they're doing. Listen, if something happened to my nation needed me,
I would probably serve. And I've served in combat before on a number of occasions and wouldn't shy away from the opportunity to do so again.
Lastly, what's the status of reapportionment? There's a ballot issue that was going to be on the ballot in Ohio. I think some of the language language was different, as we sider at the end of August. What's the status of reapportionment? The districts being on the ballot this November. Is that going to happen or not.
Yeah, So there is what is now called Issue one, which is a I would consider it a left wing effort to try to rewrite the way that district lines get drawn. Me, as a member of the chairman of the ballot board, write the language that appears on the ballot. We wrote a truthful and honest assessment of what that constitutional amendment would actually do. Now, think about this. It's
thirteen thousand words long. This amendment, this very complex Rube Goldberg device that they're trying to build here for redistricting is thirteen thousand words long. That's an amendment to the Ohio Constitution. The entire US Constitution is seven thousand, five hundred words long. And so yes, we had to we use ten bullet points to kind of explain what this does. I'm being sued by a group of leftists now that
are upset about how truthful our language was. That's going to be in front of the Ohio Supreme Court, and it's going to be up to them to decide if our language stands. But that will be a choice that Ohioans get to make. This November, if they want to put a bunch of unaccountable individuals in charge of essentially requiring them to jerrymander the state to accomplish a predetermined political outcome, which I think is a pretty cynical way of viewing this.
So someone in the ballot box would have to stand there and read thirteen thousand words to and then try to understand what they're saying before they vote. Are you kidding me? How does that work?
Well? Well, and that's why we write the summary language that actually appears on the ballot. So no, what we wrote was ten bullet points. That's what will appear on the ballot that was voted on and approved by the Ohio Ballot Board. It's now being there's a lawsuit to test whether that is is going to stand or not, and that's in front of the US Supreme Court. If you want to read all thirteen thousand words, it will
be posted at your voting location. Great, I encourage you to step out of line because it's going to take you half an hour to read all of that. You have the right to do that. We're also required to publish it on our website, publish it in the newspapers, with just as a boon for the newspapers. But the law requires us to publish that long ballot the constitutional amendment language three times in newspapers of general circulation, that kind of thing, so Ohian's had the chance to educate
themselves on it. It's a very complex amendment and and I, for one, I'm opposing it.
Well, I oppose it also it is kind of stupid. A lot of bunch of academics and others take the place of voters who decide who the officeholders are to make these decisions. Once again, Frank Lerosa, thank you for your service, and we'll see what happens down the road. But once again, thank you for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show this Thursday afternoon.
Thank you very much, Frank, see you back in the Queen City soon.
Take care, God bless America. Les continue with more, and there's my endorsement as a writing candidate for the presidency. Frank Leroe stands with the great American. Let's continue with more. Bill Cunningham News Radio seven hundred WLW