Yost’s office handled the cases, which are among 138 total allegations of people who improperly voted that his office is investigating at the request of Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose.
Yost said the six people indicted were not U.S. citizens when they allegedly voted in Ohio state or federal elections between 2008 and 2020, according to a news release from Yost’s office. They were indicted for illegal voting, a fourth-degree felony. Three are from Franklin County and the others are from Cuyahoga, Summit and Portage counties. Their cases were heard by grand juries in those counties.
On Thursday Yost spokeswoman Bethany McCorkle announced charges would be dropped against one of of those indicted, Ramesh Patel, identified by Yost’s office as age 68 of North Royalton, after Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael C. O’Malley called for Yost to dismiss the indictment because Patel died in December 2022. McCorkle did not respond to questions about how Yost’s investigation resulted in the indictment of a dead man.
Five of those indicted last week or this week face a single count of illegal voting and one was indicted on two counts, according to Yost’s office. Illegal voting can carry a maximum sentence of 18 months in prison and five years post-release control. Those indicted are awaiting arraignment and so have not issued pleas.
“This is a matter of holding them accountable for a violation of the law but I don’t anticipate prison time,” Yost said at a Tuesday news conference. “The way I look at it, (in) these cases none of them have the factors making the offense more serious and justifying a prison term. And most of the factors making it less likely for a prison term do exist.”
The news release said five of the six were legal permanent residents when the alleged voting occurred, and all lacked U.S. citizenship. But the news release does not indicate if any of them are now naturalized citizens.
“Irregularities like this are rare, and this is a small number of cases,” Yost said in the news release. “We should all be confident in the upcoming election, knowing that the laws are being enforced and will continue to be enforced.”
Yost’s office said a seventh case was presented to a Lorain County grand jury, which declined to indict the person, who was an Oberlin college student alleged to have voted in Ohio and Washington in 2018. That person’s U.S. citizenship wasn’t in question and Yost said he believes the grand jury didn’t indict because it couldn’t be proven that the person who voted twice was him.
Yost said his office’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) looked first at the cases involving alleged noncitizen voting because those tend to be less difficult to prove than cases where people are accused of voting illegally multiple times.
Voter fraud rare
Voter fraud by American citizens or noncitizens in the U.S. is exceedingly rare, according to studies by groups such as the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice, the conservative Heritage Foundation and the libertarian-leaning CATO Institute. Ohio has about 8 million registered voters.
It is illegal in the U.S. for noncitizens to vote in federal elections and the Ohio Constitution prohibits noncitizens from voting in any elections. People must attest that they are citizens when they register but federal law prohibits requiring proof of citizenship for federal elections.
“An indictment is not a conviction. And we are glad that we have safeguards in place that can protect our system from bad actors. But we can see that if there’s only six indictments out of this entire batch it proves that fraud is exceedingly rare,” said Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio. “I think what’s most important now is for no one to panic. This is early in the process and I believe some of these folks may actually be citizens, but there is discrepancy in paperwork.”
In August LaRose announced he’d referred to Yost for investigations of 597 cases alleging noncitizens registered to vote, including 138 who allegedly voted. LaRose followed up in September with a request that Yost reinvestigate 621 cases of alleged election law violations involving citizens and noncitizens that LaRose said county prosecutors hadn’t done enough to prosecute.
But on Tuesday Yost said the bulk of the September cases were duplicates of what LaRose sent in August, so the total number of unique cases Yost wound up with was 653. He said most of them were voter registration allegations, which he is investigating for possible consideration by county prosecutors but doesn’t have authority to prosecute. The remaining 138 cases involve alleged improper voting, including the seven cases Yost discussed Tuesday.
Yost had said at the news conference that he thought the six indicted people were the only ones among the voting cases his office is investigating that were allegedly noncitizens, but his spokesman Steve Irwin later said there are additional possible noncitizens among the remaining cases.
“If and when any of those cases lead to indictments, more information about their citizenship status may be available,” Irwin said. “I do not have a number of the noncitizens included in the voter registration cases as those referrals continue to be investigated by BCI and citizenship statuses confirmed by other agencies.”
Follow @LynnHulseyDDN on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X.
See our election integrity series:
Ohio BMV’s mistakes led to noncitizens getting registered to vote, officials say
LaRose announces BMV review after Dayton Daily News reveals noncitizen voter registrations
About the Author
