Just before Covid hit the U.S., back in February 2020, I convened a public conference, “Can American Democracy Survive the 2020 Elections?” One of the key panels was my interview with Republican Ohio SOS Frank LaRose and Democrat Michigan SOS Jocelyn Benson. You can watch the interview here, to see how reasonable and sensible they both were on exaggerated claims of voter fraud:
Now comes this disturbing story out of WKYC in Ohio, Once claiming moderation, Ohio secretary of state says Trump has a point about voter fraud:
When he was running for office in 2018, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose said overblown election claims by Democrats and Republicans hurt Americans’ faith in democracy. Democrats overhype what they call voter suppression and Republicans overblow claims of voter fraud, LaRose said at the time.
Now that he’s running for reelection, LaRose, a Republican, is singing a different tune. He went so far last week as to claim that former President Trump — who has relentlessly lied about voter fraud and tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election — has a point.
LaRose took to Twitter to accuse the media of unfairly downplaying the threat of voter fraud.
“Here they go again,” LaRose tweeted. “Mainstream media trying to minimize voter fraud to suit their narrative.”
LaRose followed that with a series of tweets in which he played up referrals of possible voting crimes that his office made to Attorney General Dave Yost. Then LaRose wrote this about voter fraud elsewhere: “It’s an even bigger problem in other states where laws & leaders are weak. President Trump is right to say voter fraud is a serious problem. More to come.”
This is very sad to see. But it is very hard for any Republican with aspirations for future office to stand up against a Trump Republican base that has been whipped by Trump’s false claims into thinking that the 2020 election was stolen.
Still very sad. I thought Secretary LaRose, even when I disagreed with him on some things, was fundamentally a person of integrity and honesty.