Today. It all happens.
We may not have a result for Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, but nonetheless it happens on a week from today. Joining you and I now is Frank Lrose, who is the Ohio Secretary of State. He's in charge of all eighty eight county elections. And Frank LaRose, welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show. And first of all, I had on yesterday Sherry Poland, the excellent executive director of the Hamley
County Board of Elections. She gave us some numbers, So can you give the American people some numbers about from the Secretary of State's perspective, how many have voted by mail at this point a week out, how many have walked in? How many ballots are out there not yet return I need all that information.
Give me a full report.
Yes, sir, and you're right. Sherry is one of the best in the business. We're honored to have her. And by the way, in Ohio, we will give you the results on election night. We brew a pot of coffee and stay up late and do our work avail. All this information is available on our website as well, which is ohiosos dot gov slash data we've got an all
new data dashboard. And so what this tells us is that at this point, as of our last update several hours ago, one point one million Ohioans have requested an AST ballot, about seven hundred thousand have returned their asketee ballot. That means sixty five percent of people that have requested their ballot have actually sent it back in. So if if it's sitting on your dashboard or sitting on your kitchen table, make sure to get it in the mail. It's got to get postmarked by next Monday, but no
reason to wait. Early in person voting has been strong as well. Nine hundred and forty one thousand Ohioans have taken advantage of early voting. And so when you combine early in absentee voting one point six to eight million Ohioans, one point six to eight million Ohiolands have already voted. But Lilly, here's the number that I think is really interesting as well. Republicans are outpacing Democrats in both early
and absentee voting by by a lot. Right, five hundred thousand, five hundred and fifteen thousand Republicans have already voted early. Only three hundred and forty nine thousand Democrats have. Now, this is not the way it used to be. It used to be if Republicans were not trailing by too much when the polls opens on election day, we felt pretty good about it. The fact that Republicans are leading Democrats by this number in early voting, I think says a lot.
So you're saying that at this point, this Tuesday afternoon, and they got another week to go, that grossly more Republicans have early voted than Democrats, and that's quite unusual, it is.
And by the way, that's registered Republicans, so that means you have to be the only way to be a registered Republican means you vote in the primaries, or a registered Democrat for that matter. And so of course there's a large number of what we call unaffiliated voters that just don't vote in spring primaries, so they don't show up with a partisan affiliation. But among registered Republicans it
is one data metric. But among registered Republicans we are outpacing registered Democrats by well over one hundred thousand votes right now.
So if one point seven million approximately have already voted either returned, there are ballots, which is about seven hundred thousand, and then those who vote in person, the numbers about one point seven million. By the end of business today, it'll probably be right out one point seven million. Can you extrapolate from that by Monday close of business how many Ohiglands would have voted early, either in person or buy the mail.
Yeah. I'm not gonna hazard a guess on that, because invariably, if I'm a little low, then the mainstream media says he's predicting low turnout. And if I'm a little high, then people say, oh, he doesn't know what he's talking about. I will say this, the numbers are really strong. They're on par with what we've seen in past elections, and I think we're on pace to have another record breaking election. I'll say this too. Regardless, the boards of elections are ready.
If people decide to wait and come on Tuesday, we'll be ready for that. If we have a large turnout this weekend, for example, there may be lines. You got to be smart about this. If you decide to show up on Saturday afternoon to the early voting center, that's the highest traffic time, so you're probably gonna wait line.
If you go on Thursday afternoon, at three pm. You're not likely to see lines at the early voting location then, So again, whatever you do, we'll be ready to make sure that you have an honest vote and that it's convenient in Ohio.
Now let's talk gross numbers. I like to deal with facts. Some deal with hyperbole. I deal with facts. There's about twelve million Ohioans alive right now, about twelve million, and I would assume there's about three million underage of eighteen. Hopefully they're not voting. So this election is similar to what happened in twenty twenty or a little bit more. What's going to be in your guestimation, the total turnout, the total number of votes casting this election is approximately what.
Yeah, again, that's not a number that I like to pardicularly, but i'd saying I'll say this. We set a record in twenty twenty, the all time highest turnout election, by the way, an election where in Ohio Republicans did very well. So don't let anybody say that high turnout benefits the Democrats. When Ohio and show up in large numbers, actually usually votes well for Republicans. But we set a record in twenty twenty, we may break that record this.
Year, which is what what's the record?
Oh, gosh, have like seventy seventy five something?
That was it was, it was something in that in that area.
Yeah, let's talk about lawsuits. I see in Virginia, Glenn Youngkin is being sued. They were about eighteen hundred to persons living in Virginia who self identified as not able to vote because they're not citizens. There's a federal law that says to vote, you have to be a US citizen. Now, in Virginia, he said, well, I got seventeen hundred so called human beings living in Virginia who admit they're not citizens.
Therefore I'm taking them off the voter rolls. The federal government sued the governor, saying, wait a minute, you can't do that. You can't take off non citizens from voter rules. Tell me in Ohio what's happening in that regard.
So in Ohio we have been working to remove non citizens as well. It hasn't gotten as much attention because they haven't sued US. I think that's probably because the way that we structured it in Ohio was narrowly crafted to make sure that we could remove non citizens from the voter roles without at the same time getting into the crosshairs of DJ Here's how we've done it. We
do it on an individual basis. When we first of all, we work to prevent non citizens from ever becoming register, but if they do get registered within a week or two, we have removed them because we check the voter rules on the front end. As new registrations come in, we verify them against the Ohio BMV database, against the single
federal database they let us choose. I'm trying to get access to the other ones, and if we flag them as a non citizen, we do further investigation, and then we individually investigate those and instruct the boards on a one on one basis to remove them from the rules. Since just the last couple of months, I've removed over seven hundred non citizens from the voter rules. And so when Democrats say that there's no such thing as non
citizens attempting to register to vote, that's hogwash. We found it. Seven hundred out of twelve million is a relatively small number. But we're not going to just allow that kind of crime to accer in Ohio. We're going to identify it, remove them from the rules, and we been doing it in a way that I'm confident is consistent, although DJ is definitely sneaking around, sniffing around, if you will, Ohio, and trying to find me messing up so that they
can file a lawsuit here as well. We're not going to give them that pleasure.
Why would the DOJ not agree with you that non citizens shouldn't vote? So when you take them off, how come for Genuoue sued and you weren't sued.
Yeah, well, I'll give you their public argument. They say, well, you may be accidentally ensnaring a small number that have recently become naturalized. Of course, we have safeguards in place
to make sure that that doesn't happen. But you know, if one were a skeptic, they could say, perhaps that the same administration that has left our southern border completely unguarded and has resulted in a really national embarrassment and disaster, this invasion that's occurring on our southern border, one might draw the conclusion that folks in the Biden Harris administration want those people to vote. You know, that's a wild thing,
but it's entirely possible. Idea, We're not going to allow that to happen in Ohio.
And so at this point you're not been sued yet, but they're looking over your shoulder to find some reason to sue you.
But is the statement accurate?
If I would say this, non citizens in America cannot legally vote, is that accurate?
That's correct, that's correct.
So why wouldn't the federal government join with you and making sure your data who can vote is shared with you so that you get them off get them off their roles.
Why doesn't that happen?
Some things defy logic, Willy. I mean, here's the thing. I've been working to try to get access to better data from the federal government, and they have blocked me at every turn. For months now. I've been asking them for access to the other three databases. Typical federal government. They don't just have one database for non citizens, It's spread across four. They've only given me access to one
of those databases, which is of course therefore incomplete. When I've been asking for months and months, they have stonewalled and ignored us. When we finally got our congressional delegation involved, my friend, Congressman Jim Jordan got involved and we were able to finally rattle their cage enough that they answered us and they said no, we will not let you access these databases. And so I had no choice but
to file a lawsuit against DHS. That's what we did last week to get them to cough up this data which federal law says they must provide us.
And they want to slow roll this until maybe Wednesday of next week.
Well one with guess. But here's the thing. This is important regardless of whether we get the access to this before or after this election, because after the election, we go into enforcement mode and we want to look at the voter rules and if somebody has attempted to cast a ballot on behalf of a deceased Ohio and we want to make sure they face justice for it. If somebody's attempted to vote in Ohio and in another state,
we want to catch them. And if a non citizen has in fact attempted to or even cast a ballot in Ohio, we need to detect that so we can turn that over to county prosecutors and to the Ohio Attorney General. Because when a law is not enforced, Lily, it's not a law, it's suggestion. And we will make sure even if it's small numbers that people face justice for those kinds of elections crimes.
And when this issue arises, I hear Mary Garland or hear Kamala Harris talk about voter intimidation, that by you enforcing the law, you're intimidating voters. Can you respond to the voter intimidation argument.
Well, I tell you who I intend to intimidate. I intend to I want to intimidate those who are attempting to break our law. And so if you are a non citizen and you're thinking about trying to cast a vote, I want you to be intimidated. If you are somebody who is planning to cast a ballot on or try to cast a ballot on behalf of a deceased person, I want you to be intimidated. And the Left and all of their handwringing about this is well, it's really nonsense.
Ohioan's no. Americans know that it's easy to vote. My job is to also make sure that it's hard to cheat.
Let's move on quickly to State Issue one. Can you briefly describe to the American people what is State Issue one and what.
It does it say and what doesn't.
It say yes. So. Issue one is a thirteen thousand word constitutional amendment that is being paid for by out of state special interests to the tune of over thirty million dollars. Eighty five percent of those dollars come from Washington, New York, California. And we even believe that six million of those dollars have come from a Swiss billionaire, literally, a guy from Switzerland that wants to tell us how our district line should be drawn. This thing, beyond being complex,
takes away the power from the voters. It puts the power into the hand of fifteen unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats. And here's the kicker willing. You cannot fire these people. You cannot remove them from their job, even for malfeasance, for committing a crime. Nothing can take their ability to draw these lines away from them once they're appointed to it. And you're not even allowed to talk to them. I
think this is a clear First Amendment violation. But the amendment literally says that if you discuss redistricting with one of these members of the redistricting Commission, that you violated the Law's crazy. So if you sit next to them in church and you have a comment to make you're not allowed to talk to them about the work that they do, that they're being paid for to do by
the taxpayers. What they're really required to do under Issue one is to jerrymander the state to draw a certain number of democratic districts that they preconceive as their formula. I think this is really bad news for Ohio, and that's why we've been very clear about this. And that's why, by the way, also we drafted very honest, very blunt, but very honest language that's on the ballot. It has
been approved as truthful by the Ohio Supreme Court. And so if you read the few hundred words on your ballots that describe what this thing does, I think you'll arrive at the same conclusion I have.
All the polling indicates is going to be a yes vote because citizens respond, the term jerry mandering is used. The citizens respond, but stated briefly. They're seven members of the Reapportionment Board. They are the governor, the Secretary State, and the auditor, and two from the House, two from the Senate that we as lowly citizens actually vote for. We decide who's on the Reapporcement poard. This amendment would say,
no more voting. You don't get to vote anymore. And there's going to be retired appellate judges like my wife, for example. If you won't take it, but nonetheless retired to pellate judges in Ohio will appoint five Republicans, five Democrats. They then appoint five independence fifteen get together that we don't vote for, and they will draw. You can't fire, and you can't fire them. You can't fire, you can't let them go.
Did Trump as a smart executive, has said in the past that if you can't fire somebody, they don't actually work for you. And that's the problem with these unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats. You cannot bounce them from their jobs, no matter how bad of a job they do. If you don't like the way the governor and the auditor and I and the two members of the House and the two members of send, if you don't like the way
we draw district lines, you can fire us. And guess what, Ohioans didn't do that In twenty twenty one, we drew new district lines and I got more votes than any secretary's has ever gotten in history. So people must like the work that we do in totality and decided to keep us around.
But at least we vote.
You know, I love you politically, that's great. But if Tony Bender is a left winger from Green Township and he says, I've had it with Frank LeRose, I've had it with Mike Dwaine. I want those guys gone. They got the opportunity to say I'm voting against that guy. If this thing passes, the voting is done, democracy dies in darkness and because of Swiss billionaires and a slick commercial run by a defroct Supreme Court justice named Ren O'Connor,
who's as an effective ad but it's wrong. But nonetheless, if citizens are led to believe that democracy is alive by not voting, you can vote yes on Issue one and the voting is done, and then it becomes it's in the constitution and away we go and God help us all. Well, Frank, we got a run. But thanks for calling in today this afternoon, and we'll see what happens. But I often say we get the government we deserve, and at times that concerns me greatly.
But we'll see what happens.
Vote no in state Issue one because if you want to vote in the future for the members of this board.
Vote no.
If you don't want to vote anymore, vote yes. Democracy will live in darkness. But Frank la Russ, once again, thank you for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show. Maybe we'll check in next week as things are hot and heavy, and thank.
You Frank, Thank you, sir. God bless and.
God bless America.
Let's continue with more, very simple six million dollars in TV ads to convince Ohio ones it is time to quit voting.
What and maybe it's working. I hope not. Let's continue.
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