A new bill announced by Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose to standardize and modernize state voting records is being welcomed by election administrators and some voter advocates, who say it could increase transparency and confidence in elections.
But the first-of-its-kind legislation was developed with help from a think tank that is leading the charge nationally for more restrictive voting rules and has been called a “White House in waiting” for a second Trump administration. The bill also is winning praise from conservative activists who have spread fear about illegal voting as part of an effort to pressure election officials to more aggressively purge voter rolls.
The measure, known as the Data Analysis Transparency Archive (DATA) Act, could offer a glimpse of a future conservative agenda on voting issues. At a Feb. 22 press conference announcing the bill, LaRose, a Republican, thanked the America First Policy Institute for “helping with the development” of the legislation. AFPI reportedly aims to create a policy platform for former President Donald Trump.
A spokesman for LaRose did not respond to an inquiry about AFPI’s role in developing the bill. But Hilton Beckham, AFPI’s director of communications, said via email that the group did not write the bill. Beckham said it came out of an AFPI report released last year, which found that many local election offices are failing to retain election data as required by law, and that in many counties, the total number of ballots cast doesn’t match up with the total number of registered voters who cast ballots.
“Being able to analyze election results in real-time will help find out why this is happening immediately,” Beckham added, “potentially catching unlawful activity, and eliminating distrust and conspiracy (theories) from voters caused by sloppy record keeping.”
The AFPI report notes near the end that, after reviewing AFPI’s findings, LaRose “spearheaded a national effort” to urge states to pass laws ensuring voter data is preserved.
Now, the two are teaming up to spread the word. On March 4, LaRose promoted the DATA Act alongside Hogan Gidley, a former Trump campaign spokesman who helps run AFPI’s elections policy arm, on an elections panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a major confab for GOP activists and officials.
And in late February, LaRose tweeted a picture of himself meeting with members of Congress’ “election integrity caucus” in Washington, D.C., “to share the Ohio model.” The caucus was founded by Rep. Claudia Tenney, a New York Republican who appeared on an AFPI voting panel in July, and who has said of the 2020 election: “We don’t know if it was stolen or not.”
These collaborations with election deniers and other backers of restrictive voting rules raise the question: Is LaRose’s bill a wonky and bipartisan measure — “something that should be embraced by both Republicans and Democrats,” as he put it at the Ohio press conference — that has the potential to make genuine improvements to how election officials maintain and publish voting records? Or could it help advance the agenda of national Republicans working to lay the groundwork for new voting restrictions by stoking fear about fraud?
Or both?