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At OHEA.org.

We continue a series of conversations with the major party candidates for statewide office with Secretary of State.

Their platforms and perspectives in their own words.

This week in the State of Ohio, welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

We're continuing a series of interviews we do every four years, conversations with the candidates, specifically the ten major party candidates for the five statewide executive offices of governor auditor treasurer, attorney general, and this week, secretary of state.

We're airing the interviews in the order that they were conducted, starting with Frank Laura's Republican, former state senator and the current secretary of state.

But two things.

It starts with motivation.

I love this office because of what this office does.

We really have two main missions and that's the second part is mission a sense of mission for what we do for the people of Ohio.

We help people vote and we help people start businesses.

And if you think about it, those are two things that are very empowering thing in the life of an individual, in the life of a community.

Think about my family's story where my great grandfather immigrated from Italy and got his paperwork from Ohio 100 years ago so he could start his business.

And that's still a business.

That's an operation in northern Ohio.

I ran into somebody just this morning in our client service division.

I was chatting him up and and he was getting ready to start his new business in Cleveland.

And that journey for him begins at the secretary of state's office.

That's remarkable.

Of course, the role of being chief elections officer.

I've traveled around the world and been to places where I've saw people I've seen people literally risk their lives to cast ballots.

The power of free people to change things through elections is something that can never be underestimated.

Defending democracy, protecting that precious right to vote is something that I love and and enjoy doing every day, along with our 88 county boards of elections.

And so in that sense, I believe in the work of this office, and I love doing the work.

Now, you asked about things that we didn't get accomplished in the last four years that we want to get accomplished in the next The last four years have been an incredibly tumultuous period in elections administration.

I'm proud of the fact that we have been a steady hand on the rudder through some very difficult times.

And when you compare Ohio, even just sort of looking at us compared to other states, we have weathered the storm very well and we've shown that we're really the best in the nation when it comes to running elections, even through the unprecedented challenges that we faced in 2020 and again in 2022.

There are some strategic things that I've wanted to do that we've been able to make some progress on.

I'd like to do even more when it comes to cybersecurity, when it comes to modernizing some of the processes of this office, when it comes to the work of civic engagement and civic education, making sure that people have a deeper understanding of how elections really work and know why.

I can say without hesitation that in Ohio it is both easy to vote and hard to cheat.

Those are things I want to continue doing in my next term in this office is the process to remove people from the voting rolls fair, in your view, or a lot of people call it purging, which I know can be a pejorative word.

Is it fair, in fact, as far as you're concerned?

Yeah.

Ohio does it, I think, better than most other states.

And some of that is innovation that we've brought to this.

You know, the old days it worked like this.

And to be clear, both Republican and Democratic secretaries of state have carried out the law that says if you become inactive for six years and you don't respond to the multiple mailings that we send you, that you then get removed from the voter rolls.

Well, for previous administrations, that was just sort of a day in time when all of the boards hit the delete button and those records were then removed from the voter rolls.

I decided, let's get proactive about this.

We know in advance, here are the 200,000 or so names that are set to be removed from the voter rolls on this date instead of waiting until the day that we have to hit the delete key.

Let's get a few months ahead of it and let's engage with community groups and see if we can find some of those people and get them to reactivate or to continue being an active voter.

Now, what I know is that that list of 200,000, some registrations, they're not all voters in many cases.

It's just bad data.

It's what I call the three D's deceased, self-evident, departed, meaning moved out of state or duplicate, which is just bad data, data entry errors and that kind of thing.

And so this was validated.

I actually just had a conversation with one of those community partners that we put those lists out too, and they knocked on doors and called voters and tried to get people to reactivate.

They found through their outreach efforts that, yeah, there were a few thousand that they were able to get to, to reregister, to stay involved and to activate their voter registration but the vast majority of those were legitimately just bad data.

And so Ohioans expect us to maintain accurate voter rolls.

They want deceased voters removed from the rolls with regularity.

They want people to move out of state, removed from the rolls with regularity.

We do that and we do it in a better way than probably any other state in the country.

And Secretary of State, you're also on the Ohio Redistricting Commission you've gotten some criticism for voting for maps that were unconstitutionally gerrymandered, according to the Ohio Supreme Court.

Some have said you're breaking the law.

You should be held in contempt if you and other Republicans on the commission are reelected.

Can you say that things will be different next time around when you have to draw the maps to replace the unconstitutional maps or rule?

Republicans just dominate this process.

Well, as you know, I've been a long time proponent of reforming the redistricting process.

I helped lead the charge on that in the legislature.

I wanted to see us get to a place of compromise where Republicans and Democrats could work together.

Unfortunately, there was there was not a strong interest from either side in finding that middle ground.

That was a frustration for me.

And I've been very candid about that, that I hope that going forward, both my Republican and Democratic colleagues will be willing to come to the table, roll up their sleeves and find those middle ground solutions.

I also believe, though, that the Ohio Supreme Court got these decisions badly wrong.

But you did call one of those maps one of those sets of maps asinine, didn't you?

What I said was that the rationale for the number of people that vote Republican versus vote Democrat that had been advanced by one of my Republican colleagues, that that just wasn't good math as far as I'm concerned.

There was a I think at one point an assertion that if Ohioans voted for Republicans in 13 out of the last 14 statewide races, then that means that Ohioans are overwhelmingly Republican.

And that's just simply not true.

I think that the state leans to the Republican side.

I think that the Republicans have an advantage.

I think that we've earned that because of the public policies that we advance that square with the values the people of Ohio have.

But I don't think that you can say that Ohio is 80% Republican.

I just I didn't think that was good math and so, yeah, I called that out.

But but the court has also moved the goalposts on this and invented things that do not appear anywhere in the Ohio Constitution.

Remember the Ohio Supreme Court told us you must draw 56 Republican districts and 45 Democratic districts for the House of Representatives?

Well, we did that exactly.

And we took we we had to work really hard.

And many of us were uncomfortable with the the lack of compactness that came out of that map.

I called it court mandated gerrymandering when the court orders you to draw a specific set of maps to achieve a specific political outcome.

That is, to me, the textbook definition of gerrymandering.

But we believe in rule of law.

So we tried to do what the court was ordering us to do, which was a pretty difficult task.

And then the court somehow still rejected that set of maps and invented this new concept that they called symmetry.

I challenge you to find that word anywhere in the Ohio Constitution.

But the court said you have to draw safer Democratic districts when you draw these 45 Democratic districts.

And again, that's where we said, listen, we've gone as far as we can go here.

We can't ignore these parts of the Constitution to comply with this court order and still do so in a way that we believe is consistent with our oath of office.

Well, I could talk more about this.

Obviously.

I want to move on to one other thing.

It's been said by many times by you and other people in Ohio that Ohio runs its elections very well.

And you even said that the 20, 20 election was possibly the best one, one that you had seen you tweeted in February, though, that President Trump is right to say that voter fraud is a serious problem, though you said that was the state case in other states and that mainstream media is trying to minimize voter fraud to suit their narrative.

Well, don't statements like that potentially fuel the unfounded claims of election deniers and put elections officials who are already getting threats more at risk?

Absolutely not.

It is our responsibility as citizens to question government, and that means elections administration as well.

It's okay to be skeptical it's okay to have tough questions.

It's okay to want to see what's happening behind the counter at the Board of Elections.

And there's nothing to hide at a county board of elections where an open book.

And that's something that we're proud of.

But there are concerns that President Trump has raised that I think are valid.

But he also has said that Ohio is a state that runs good elections, and that's something that we can be proud of.

In fact, in many ways, we're an example that other states should follow.

But other states have made some serious mistakes, in my opinion.

Things like settling activist lawsuits just days before an election that changed the rules entirely, or what I call crisis opportunism, where some of my colleagues, other secretaries of state in the country have done things that they felt justified in doing because of a pandemic that I don't believe they were legally permitted to do.

And so those are things that happen that shouldn't happen.

But to the extent that there are bad things that happen in election, you'll never hear me talk about some sort of secretive cabal, some sort of dark, you know, black ops conspiracy that's happening because the bad things that happen in elections don't happen in secret.

They happen in a courtroom, they happen in a secretary of state's office.

They happen in full public view generally.

But that doesn't mean that we don't call those out.

And certainly calling out a problem in an election and working to improve it for the future doesn't make you an election denier that that label gets placed on people with a certain political motivation?

Sometimes it's okay to find where there are problems and work to make them better.

That doesn't make you an election denier.

I I'm asking all the five statewide executive office holders who are incumbents who have all been endorsed by President Trump, and especially for use and should be in charge of elections with no evidence to support Trump's claims of a stolen election.

Do you affirm the results of the 2020 election and that Joe Biden is president?

No question about it.

Listen, I serve also as a soldier in the United States Army, as a reservist, and that in that case, although I disagree with him on most or all of his public policies, Joe Biden is my commander in chief when I'm in uniform.

And to that extent, I hope the president does well because when the president succeeds, the nation succeeds.

But I've been deeply concerned about some of the things this administration has done.

There is a process that has played out where states certify their results.

Congress accepts those results.

There's only one person that walks down the West steps of the US Capitol and takes the oath of office on the assigned day.

That person is Joseph, our buddy.

But we have to find where there are things that didn't go well in 2020 and work to improve them not only for 20, 24, but for all elections.

And again, this is where I've been very outspoken about other states should follow Ohio's example.

And finally, should the head of the states elections be it partizan events and accepting endorsements, previous secretaries of state have decided against doing this thing.

Yeah.

So it's interesting because all of us that serve in public office have sort of the dual role of being a public official and having those public responsibilities, but also being a candidate for office.

Our system is set up that way.

There's a reason why the Ohio Constitution creates this as a partizan elected position.

It's up to each individual to determine how best to keep those two worlds separately.

I can tell you the work that I do as Ohio Secretary of State.

I don't approach it as a Republican or a Democrat.

I would say you don't want an activist secretary of state for either party.

Right?

You want somebody that's going to follow the law, be bound by the rule of law, and then conduct elections according to the laws in the state of Ohio to the best of their abilities.

I also am a Republican and a proud supporter of people from my party because I believe that they are better suited to lead our state going forward and to serve in federal offices.

And so there are times that I'll campaign with somebody in my personal capacity as a candidate.

And that's something that we work to to make sure that those delineations are clear.

As Secretary of state, I conduct the work of this office in a in a completely nonpartisan way.

But in my private capacity as a citizen, as a candidate, certainly on occasion, I can support candidates who share my values.

Later, I talked with the Democratic candidate for secretary of State small business owner at Forest Park City Council member Chelsey Clark.

Part of this goes back to my father.

1964 Birmingham, Alabama.

Alabama, my dad's 17 and he was, you know, in nonviolent protest marching and the civil rights movement was jailed.

You know you have Dr. Martin Luther King writing a letter from the Birmingham Jail.

You have my dad, my father sitting in there with other folks from the movement.

And so what I absolutely refuse to do is to continue to fight my father's battles on so very intimately and passionately connected with this type of work and with the defending of democracy and voting rights.

And then I'm a small businesswoman, so I understand some of the challenges that small business owners are facing.

And that's also part of the responsibility of this office.

And then, most importantly, making sure that we can restore the faith that people had in our election system.

This is about having a moral courage to do what's right on behalf of voters and to be honest and transparent.

And that is not something that I'm seeing currently in the administration.

And so I felt it was my civic duty, quite frankly, to get involved.

You mentioned on your website as a point of your platform that you will stop voter purges.

What do you mean by that?

The way Ohio removes voters from its voter rolls was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018.

Yes, it was I do mean unnecessary voter purges.

And so of course the process of purging gets rid of folks that have been that have moved outside their jurisdiction, folks that have passed on.

And so those are completely you know, those are valid.

But what we saw from the current administration in 2019 we saw almost 400,000 folks get get prepared to be purged and when an independent an organization had come into it to review and analyze what was happening we found that tens of thousands of those individuals were in fact eligible voters were folks that had just previously voted.

And so making sure that we've got a system that's very responsive and accurate instead of targeting certain communities groups and age groups and things like that is what I mean by that unnecessary voter purges is not something that's that's necessary.

As secretary of state, you would also be on the Ohio Redistricting Commission.

Yes, I know Democrats have talked about drawing fair maps if they're elected, but you and at least one of the other Democrats on the commission would are one of the other Democrats running would have to be elected to for Democrats to have a bigger role on the commission.

So how would Democrats and how would you be able to draw fair maps if you are not in the majority on the commission?

Well, the secretary of state's role is first and foremost not to be partizan.

This is not about you know, this is not about Republican versus Democrat.

This is about fact versus fiction.

This is about democracy versus autocracy.

And in 2018 voters overwhelmingly across the state, almost 75% of us said, hey, we want a reform in the redistricting process.

And that is not what we saw being upheld.

Instead, what we saw was partizan politics that play an obstruction those maps even even my opponent and the governor said, hey, we're concerned about the constitutionality of these and in quote they're even asinine but yet they continue to vote for them.

That is the problem with what's happening at the state House is that political partizanship is taking place of good governance.

It's taking place of doing the will of Ohio voters.

And it's going to take someone that's not going to cave to extremists in order to do that.

And first and foremost, first and foremost, push the agenda of what Ohio voters want.

Whether you like it or not, this is not about a blue seat.

This is not about a red seat.

That seat is red, white and blue.

And that's what I tell people.

You are endorsed by the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, the group associated with former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, the legal arm of that group, was one of the groups that sued Ohio over unconstitutional maps or maps that were ruled unconstitutional since.

If you're reelected, you will be on that commission.

Should you accept an endorsement from this group?

Well, like I said, we are talking about fair maps to be at play.

There were several independent map map makers that brought forth maps that were more commiserate with the actual voting patterns, the voting patterns for Ohio.

And each time the GOP on our redistricting commission refused to accept them.

Not only has this cost us a lot of time, this has put us in a bifurcated primary the most I mean, we spent over $25 million on the second primary, unprecedented and that hardly anybody even even participated in.

And so, again, what we're seeing is partizan politics.

This is not the place for what is the place is making sure that we create policy and that we vote on maps that are constitutional.

And my opponent even tried to come after the you know, the Republican chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court that didn't rule against them.

This is about constitutionality.

And, you know, I studied political science at Miami University.

I'm absolutely going to uphold the Constitution of Ohio.

And that is part of that is not playing sides.

Part of that is doing exactly what the will the people have voted for.

That is what democracy is about.

Do you think taking that endorsement, though, is a partizan stance?

I do not.

Let me ask you about Ohio's elections.

It's been said several times that Ohio runs its elections fairly well.

Republicans nationwide and sometimes in Ohio have baselessly talked about widespread voter fraud.

And when the most recent referral to county prosecutors was for people from the 2020 election when we had nine.

5.9 million people who voted.

But Democrats have also sounded the alarm about things that could be viewed as reasonable limitations, such as shortening the early voting period to give more time for boards of elections to prepare.

Also shortening the window to request early ballots to give people time to get those and return them are claims that changes in voting laws can lead to voter suppression.

Are those unnecessary criticisms of the voting system, and could they lead to voter suppression and problems?

Well, here in Ohio, we do have some voter suppression tactics set at play.

We have gone from, you know, leader and voting rights to now an absolute debacle.

I mean, this is for the past two cycles.

This has been a nightmare.

And what's happening again, this is costing us millions of dollars because people have been derelict at the helm and make in playing, you know, playing to the extremes.

And and so, yes, when we look at, you know, voter suppression tactics here in Ohio, those limitations are exactly those can be considered suppression tactics.

If you are limiting, you know, the amount of accessible secured ballot boxes in the county that make it difficult for working class folks or folks in our rural counties to actually get to a ballot safely.

If you are condensing early voting times, if you're closing polling locations, there's a number of different things that are at play that are making it more difficult for people to vote.

And they've based these limitations on the fact that they're somehow this widespread voter fraud when the numbers say otherwise, it just is not the case.

You're talking about less than 0.01%.

No, zero.

Right.

Exactly.

I mean, you know, known intentional voter fraud.

And so that's an infinitesimal in the world of business.

They wouldn't even be charitable.

And so, you know, what's happening is, is we're trying to create a solution for a problem that really just doesn't exist.

Your opponent, frankly, Rose, the secretary of state says he affirms the results of the 2020 election and the Joe Biden won.

But he also says that things there were things that went wrong in 2020 that need to be found and improved upon by 2024.

Do you agree and is there a model that you would want to follow or state that you think is doing it better than Ohio is doing it.

I think first and foremost we have got to fix redistricting.

I mean until until we get until we get folks that are going to endeavor to uphold the Constitution and act in a democratic fashion, we're not going to fix the situation that we have.

And so that that is the first line of defense and that's a serious issue that we have.

I do believe that he's you know, he's really gone back and forth at times.

Right.

It's kind of you know, on one moment there's there's this this voter fraud that we've got to take care of and put, you know, policies in place to to to to make it more difficult for people to cheat.

But at the same time, that's, you know, when the numbers don't indicate that that's actually in existence, then you've got to go and pull your other political card.

The problem with that is that the conversation keeps coming back to really partizan politics again, you know, shifting the line and, you know, enforcing enforcing laws when it's convenient for your political friends versus just doing the right thing across the board and making sure it's fair.

And what people don't want and what people are tired of is that type of of those type of games and and backdoor politics happening with their very intimate decisions and their civic duty and engagement process and wanting to vote.

That's what we've got to get out of it.

You and the other Democrats running for the statewide executive offices are being dramatically out fundraised by Republicans.

How do you get your message out?

So we get our message out and we get our message out in a number of different ways.

A lot of that is being, you know, just good old fashioned people power You know, I say what we say on the farm is, you know, you got to put it where to go to get it.

And so what we do when we're out and out on the campaign trails and things like that, we are talking and mostly listening to what concerns people.

And the people of this state are absolutely tired.

They're worn out of hearing the bickering and the back and forth and this and that.

When it comes to things that are really, really comments that can be commonsense, approached and fixed.

And what we've got to do is get back to the actual work in being an office.

And so, you know, coming in with honesty and wanting transparency and things like that and having a good value system is going to be imperative.

And we are seeing that message being lifted and carried throughout the state in a number of different ways.

And that is coming back to us.

And finally, the Ohio Supreme Court has ordered the secretary of State's office to restore podcast or Terps of former us onto the ballot as an independent candidate in your race, Mara said appeal the decision from the assistant secretary of state to strike nine signatures from her petitions, which were challenged by Ohio Republican Party executive director Justin Biss, Republican, former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Terrence O'Donnell had recommended striking 18 signatures.

Maris is a Trump supporter.

She is a 20, 20 election denier.

While she could potentially draw votes away from your opponent because she tried to run in May as a Republican but was not on the ballot.

How do you feel about this?

I'm just looking for a very quick statement here.

Sure.

So again, the current secretary of state, what he's done is use his power and he's permitted people.

What we see is him picking and choosing political friends and allies that he wants to run in these contestable races versus just laying it out and making it fair across the board.

I don't care who's running.

I don't care if you're an independent Republican or other Democrat or otherwise, if you've met the requirements, you should be allowed to run.

It is what's fair.

And what happened was, is when he did dismiss it, the court came back and said, hey, no, she actually can run.

And that was the right thing to do.

I talked to Frank LaRose before the Ohio Supreme Court's decision ordering the addition of Terps of former US back onto the ballot in the secretary of state's race.

The LaRose campaign said in a statement, quote, Our focus hasn't changed.

We will continue to show voters the clear and obvious reasons why Frank LaRose is the best candidate.

Next week, our Conversation with the Candidate series continues with the major party contenders for governor and an extended conversation with Democratic candidate Nan Whaley, the former mayor of Dayton.

Early voting starts October 12th.

And that's it for this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Radio and Television.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our website at State News dot org and follow us and the show on Facebook and Twitter.

And please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from Medical Mutual providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at med mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter Right Morris and Arthur LLP now with eight locations across the country.

Porter Right is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community.

More at Porter right dot com and from the Ohio Education Association representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA.ORG.