The following article was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and published on News5Cleveland.com under a content-sharing agreement.
Two potentially consequential election measures got their first hearing last week in the Ohio House, but it’s not clear the problems those measures seek to address are truly problems in the first place.
The first proposal would require watermarks on ballots, a move that would cost millions and one that even the sponsor acknowledges no other state employs. The second establishes weekly screening of voter rolls. Any voter whose information doesn’t match up — say, from a recent move — would have to cast a provisional ballot.
Watermarks
State Rep. Jennifer Gross, R-West Chester, compared watermarking ballots to similar security measures used for currency.
“Our ballots are a form of currency in their own right,” she argued. “While the U.S. Treasury is focused on ensuring we do not have fraudulent $100 bills circulating in our society, our ballots can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Gross’ proposal however doesn’t follow the currency model with a single, uniform watermark on every ballot. Instead, her bill calls for a “unique, randomly assigned identifying image, pattern, or alphanumeric code.” The watermark in this rendering would be more like the bill’s serial number than any other security feature.
To justify watermarking ballots she points to the 2022 primary election in Williams County. Their initial ballot stock wasn’t operating correctly. The board went to Defcon 1, so to speak, contracting for new ballots and borrowing from nearby Defiance County as well. In the end, the election went forward without any serious issue.
But Gross speculated darkly about ballots moved between polling locations, and insisted “in the end, the voters could only know that an unknown number of ballots were counted and that a number was given as the results. There was no way for them to know how many of the ballots counted were legitimate ballots.”
The state-mandated post-election audit found Williams County’s results were 100% accurate in each of the races officials checked.
Still, Gross contends Williams County hints at the potential for “extreme disorganization of ballots” and that the threat of someone using that disarray to sneak in illegitimate ballots is real. But all the Williams County challenges she points to relate to ballot stock —effectively a blank sheet of paper — rather than a finalized ballot marked with a voter’s choices.
Aaron Ockerman, the executive director of the Ohio Association of Election Officials, emphasized the organization has yet to take an official position on the bill, but he acknowledged it’s a new concept and they’re still thinking through “what, if any, advantages it provides.”
He explained counties already have “robust” ballot tracking and identification systems for absentee and in-person votes. Ockerman also highlighted the potential cost, which according to legislative researchers comes out to between $1.6 and $4.5 million.
The question of including an appropriation was a source of confusion during the hearing. Gross insisted an appropriation is included, although it’s not in the bill’s text. Democrats pressed her on the issue, and the committee chair, state Rep. Bob Peterson, R-Selina, said he’d work with Gross to figure out whether to include funding.
List maintenance
State Reps. Scott Wiggam, R-Wayne County, and Beth Lear, R-Galena, want to see county boards checking their voter rolls for discrepancies on a weekly basis. Among the problems they want flagged — mismatched driver’s license numbers, social security numbers, addresses or birthdates. Under the bill, if any one of those discrepancies went unaddressed, the voter would be forced to cast a provisional ballot come election day.
“We need to provide greater assurance for Ohioans that those voting in our elections are legally permitted to vote here and are actually the people who are registered in our system,” Lear insisted.
County boards and the secretary of state already run similar checks regularly and when boards find problems, they send out notices asking voters to confirm information. When voters are placed in this “confirmation” status they’re effectively on probation — the registration is still there, but they need to verify some aspect of it before casting a ballot.
The bill’s primary change is to the frequency of those checks and an insistence on a valid driver’s license or Social Security number. Up until 2023, voters could provide an alternative like a utility bill when registering to vote.
The representatives invoked electoral horror stories to justify the changes.
Wiggam described several college students in Wayne County who listed a church parsonage as their residential address despite living on the campus of Wooster College. He acknowledged they were already in “confirmation status,” but insisted “why weren’t these individuals in provisional status?”
Lear described voters forced to vote provisionally because someone else requested an absentee ballot using their names.
But those stories are dubious at best. Lear acknowledged she got her story second-hand from a poll worker. She hasn’t responded to follow-up emails requesting further information. Delaware County election officials haven’t responded either.
In Wayne County, meanwhile, election officials explained the parsonage and several Wooster College residence halls sit on the same street. A voter registration drive likely offered students an incorrect address when they were filling out their form. After Wiggam raised the alarm about the students in 2023, the board investigated and declined to forward the matter to the county prosecutor. They found none of them had cast a ballot since the 2020 primaries and they’d all since graduated.
What’s more, Wiggam’s frustration with confirmation status is puzzling. He argued “the pivotal point” is that those voters remain a “fully qualified elector,” able to sign petitions or request absentee ballots and their name appears in the poll book on election day.
But that doesn’t mean they’re in the clear. If they showed up at the polls they’d still have to vote provisionally, and if they requested an absentee ballot, a similar process would play out on the front end. The board wouldn’t immediately send a ballot — they’d first send a confirmation notice to verify the voter’s information.
Although at its core, Wiggam and Lear’s proposal simply ramps up the frequency and scope of existing verifications, in practice it would likely violate federal law.
Legislative researchers note under the National Voter Registration Act any list maintenance process must be uniform and nondiscriminatory. But the bill treats address discrepancies that arise through the BMV and the National Change of Address Service differently.
The same federal law prohibits any program to “systematically remove the names of ineligible voters” within 90 days of an election. Continuing to run the bill’s weekly list maintenance program during that timeframe could risk a court challenge.
The Ohio Association of Election Officials hasn’t taken an official position this proposal either, Ockerman said. He stated there’s “no discernible advantage” to checking the voter rolls weekly, but on the other hand, there’s likely no harm either, except for added labor costs.
