Ohio Secretary of State Rejected No Labels’ Petition for Party Status Late Last Year

Posted on by April 26, 2024

In late 2023, the Ohio Secretary of State determined that the No Labels petition for party status did not have enough valid signatures, even though No Labels had submitted over 100,000 signatures to meet a requirement of 40,345. This is old news but BAN just recently became aware of it.

Comments

Ohio Secretary of State Rejected No Labels’ Petition for Party Status Late Last Year — 70 Comments

  1. I think this should be reframed as “succeeded in getting zero candidates on the ballot.”

  3. Nuna ,

    One does, if they are in fact not valid. Depending on the internal quality control of the campaign and the degree of scrutiny by election officials, that sort of rejection rate is not that unbelievable or unprecedented. Reasons for rejection can include, among other things:

    Fraud

    Illegibility

    Signing wrong county page (town in New England states) or just not sorting by county at all

    Duplicates

    Not asking signers if they’re registered voters

    Signers lying about registration status

    Sitting on signatures too long, signers purged from voter rolls or moved by the time they’re checked (big problem if a large percentage are gathered at colleges)

    incomplete supplemental information (address plus dob, date of signing etc depending on jurisdiction)

    inaccurate name (maiden name, former married name, nickname, initials, in some jurisdictions – lack of middle initial, seriously)

    voter moved

    In some jurisdictions – issues with page numbering, issues with circulator and or notary signoffs, etc

    That’s not a complete list – just off the top of my head.

    The rules are not enforced consistently, either.

  4. There is, of course, data entry error by election officials or temporary workers they hire to check petitions, applying initiative rules which don’t even apply to candidate or party petitions erroneously to the latter, rule changes which signature collectors may not be aware of, differences between different state rules which migrant signature pickers may not be aware of, and, yes, at least sometimes, malicious invalidation by biased government workers.

  7. @Ed
    True. But a 60% or more statewide rejection rate still seems staggeringly high to me. It would have to be some systematic error, like incomplete data collecting, issues with signoffs or a data processing error, as you said.

  10. No Labels has no grassroots organization. They may have relied on their petition contractors for quality control, which is frequently a big mistake.

    No Labels is pretty notorious for sitting on signatures for a long time, so there could have been a voter purge in the meantime. That can cost a lot of sigs, especially from colleges and low income neighborhoods.

    It may be that they brought in a crew used to working in states where signatures don’t have to be sorted by county, and Ohio does, and they may have collected a lot of signatures in places such as colleges and festivals where people were registered all over. Or, if they worked colleges, they may have been getting campus addresses whereas students were registered back home, not screening for out of state students, etc.

    The state may have decided to be extra picky about checking them and disqualified a lot over obscure rules that usually don’t get enforced because the Democrats Against Democracy were itching to sue, or Democratcrat big city election office staff may have taken their own initiative and done that.

    It could have been a lot of things, or maybe a combination of them.

    60% rejection rate is not necessarily suspicious – it happens a fair bit, particularly with astroturf drives and inexperienced out of state newbie clients, or situations where there’s extra scrutiny or long delays, all of which were the case here.

  13. Only meshuggeneh retards collect paw prints. In Ohio, it’s human signatures only.

  14. Trump is the best and, indeed, only hope our country has. Otherwise, we’re the next Chinese province.

  15. DOGS/CATS/PIGS/ COWS/ HORSES/ ETC CAN SIGN PETITIONS WITH THEIR FOOT PRINTS IN OHIO —

    OR HAVE A PEN IN THEIR MOUTHS OR FEET TO SIGN PETITIONS ???

  24. Can the No Lube Party signatures count towards the Retard Party petition drive? If not, why not??

  25. Wow, hard to believe their validity was that bad considering that they hired a petition company that was checking validity.

  26. Is there any chance that some of their signatures could have been disqualified because they started this petition drive too early for the 2024 election? I recall they started this drive around August of 2022.

  27. Yes, there is a very good chance that could have played a role. See earlier comments above.

  29. Andy, do you know who they hired? Just curious.

    Little known fact: the databases petition companies use don’t typically have pictures of actual signatures, only a record of voters names, address, dob etc. Whereas, the government officials have the actual signatures from voter registrations for comparison. Therefore, internal validity checks have at least one major vulnerability.

    I’m not connecting the dots beyond that or suggesting this has anything to do with what happened here. There are plenty of equally plausible explanations above. Most likely a combination of factors, time being one of them.

  30. Different people move at different rates. The easiest signatures to get – college students, young people, slum residents – tend to move around at above average rates.

    Some of the venues where signatures are easiest to gather, like colleges and festivals, also have more out of staters and people from lots of counties within the state. Festivals and bar districts tend to lead to sloppy, illegible handprinted name, address etc from inebriated and or hurried signers (with several often signing at the same time for one “witness”).

  31. Some oddities. No Labels filed in November 2022 (sic). The Secretary of State issued a directive to county election boards on January 9, 2023 (sic) to check the petition. It requested that to avoid misplacing petitions, etc. that the counties complete their examination by March 3, 2023. It also explained that they should use the voter rolls as of November 4, 2022 when the petition was filed.

    If No Labels had been collecting for years, there could have been stale signatures. If someone had moved from Franklin County to Delaware County they might have updated their registration in order to vote in the 2022 election. Delaware County would inform Franklin County who would cancel their registration. I don’t think Franklin County is required to figure out if the voter was registered in the county when the petition was signed.

    It sounds like if a part petition includes signatures from multiple counties, that only the county with the most signatures checks the signatures.

    There was a news article last spring where the SOS suggested that the invalidity rate was a bit higher than expected. But I could find nothing on the SOS website or news accounts that the petition had been rejected.

    Frank LaRose is the Ohio Secretary of State, and was a candidate for the Republican nomination to the US Senate. No Label claimed that they were going to be in a call with them.

    LaRose denied it with his teams tweeting that he was a “Husband, Father, Green Beret, Conservative, Ohio Republican”

    His opponents tweeted, “No Labels supports anti-Trump RINOs like Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney!!!!”.

    LaRose finished third in the primary.

  32. It’s extremely unlikely that in practice any county actually went back to use a previous dated database to check signatures, regardless of SOS instructions. It’s even less likely that 88 counties followed such an unusual practice, particularly if they hired temp workers to do the actual checks, as has been done in many places around the country.

  35. @LOL

    I DISAGREE. THIS IS THE MOMENT THE BOT APPEARS TO HAVE BECOME SELF AWARE, LIKE SKYNET. THE SKY REALLY IS ABOUT TO FALL NOW. THIS IS NOT A DRILL! I REPEAT THIS IS NOT A DRILL! NO LAUGHING MATTER!

  36. The sky is/isn’t/will/won’t fall regardless of whether you laugh at it or run around like a headless chicken. I’d rather laugh. You do you and choose your own adventure.

  37. Pretty rich of Frank LaRose to be calling others “anti-Trump RINOs” after his own J6 treachery.

  38. @Ray,

    This is the SOS formal directive issued to the county board of elections.

    https://www.ohiosos.gov/globalassets/elections/directives/2023/dir2023-02-minor-party-formation.pdf

    The directive was issued in January 9, 2023 and the voter rolls used for checking the petition were for November 4, 2022 only two months earlier, and roughly coincident with the 2022 general election. The petition date was in bold, and the Ohio code sections cited. Since Ohio has had litigation over petitions in the past it is unlikely that counties cavalierly ignored the actual statutes. Presumably, voting rolls in Ohio are in electronic form so it is relatively easy to go back to a previous date particularly one only two months early coincident with a general election.

    I would not consider it “such an unusual practice” when it is prescribed by Ohio law.

    A regular worker in the county voter registration department would have prepared the voter roll and petitions even if it were temp works doing the actual verification.

    What I suggested is that if the signatures were collected over a year or years going back to 2021, that some signers would have had their registration updated, perhaps so that they could vote in the 2022 election.

  39. @Nuña,

    It was LaRose’s opponents calling him an anti-Trump RINO for allegedly consorting with No Labels. He denied having done so, and said he was a husband, father, Green Beret, Conservative, Ohio Republican.

  40. Yes, I know which petition contractor was hired for Ohio, and also had a bunch of other states, up until around May of 2023 when they were mysteriously let go by the No Labels Party. The No Labels Party then hired a different contractor at that point, and this contractor had all of the No Labels Party petitions up until the No Labels Party decided to drop out of the race. The second lead contractor was running into problems trying to get all of the No Labels Party stuff finished and handle other initiative petition contracts at the same time, so they were at risk of failing some places before the plug got pulled on it.

  41. Was No Labels collecting signatures anywhere in 2021? Also. Yes, I understood what you said the SOS told counties to do. I didn’t doubt you told the truth about that and don’t need to read the SOS memo myself.

    But there are 88 counties in Ohio, and you seem to have much higher confidence than I do that county workers did what the SOS said.

    Unusual practice? Yes. I have never heard of any elections office anywhere backdating a voter database to check signatures. Ohio has issue petitions as well, so Ohio county election offices have checked plenty of petitions. Have they ever been asked to backdate the database on any other petition, before or since then?

  42. Andy – who were these contractors out of curiosity? Or, are you sworn to secrecy to not name them?

    Maybe, the firing had something to do with whatever problem happened in Ohio, or a similar problem in a different state?

  44. Jim Riley – are you suggesting a possible motive for Mr. LaRose to sabotage the No Ladle petition, as revenge for him being falsely associated with them being used against him in his run for a different office?

    If so, how was his instructions to county officials consistent with such a hypothetical motive? Or, was it used to hide his tracks to make it look like he was trying to be fair, while he sabotaged them some other way?

    If you are not implying any such motive or possible malfeasance by Mr LaRose or his office, what is the point if any of bringing up the false No Lables connection being used against him in his race for a different office?

    Do you believe it’s highly, somewhat, or minimally likely he did something to invalidate valid signatures in revenge, or highly unlikely?

  46. ‘Stupider’ than stupid

    When I see polls on the bizarre number of Americans who apparently think Donald Trump is a suitable person to lead this country, I think of George Carlin’s remark, “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
    —
    BAN TRUMP TROLL MORONS IN THE BOTTON 1 PCT SUPER-STUPID

  49. @Ray,

    I came across the directive in a Google search. Otherwise there was ABSOLUTELY NO evidence of No Labels ever filing a petition in Ohio. There was an article on BAN from Spring 2023 that No Labels was petitioning along with a public radio story.

    Richard Winger says that the rejection occurred a long time ago, but that he just recently became aware of it. I found it interesting that there were not 40,000 signatures if 100,000 were submitted.

    I am more thorough than most people, so I do read memos. I understand that you have no need to read the memo. Had I not read the memo, I would not have known that the petition had been filed in 2022 (sic), which I found to be unusual.

    Ohio does have 88 counties. There may have been none or almost no signatures from many counties. If I were running a petitioning operation in Ohio, I would focus on Franklin, Hamilton, and Cuyahoga counties. Because Ohio has a mild distribution requirement (500 signatures from 8 congressional districts), I might also collect in Lucas, Montgomery, and Summit counties. These six counties have 46% of the population. I would skip Vinton.

    I would target OH-1, -3, -7, -8, -9, -10, -11, -13, -15. The population and signer density is higher and urban and suburban areas are going to be more receptive to a No Labels petition. Smaller cities and rural areas that are comfortably Republican may be wary of Trump, but they are absolutely opposed to Biden.

    If the county election workers did use the current (January 2023 voting rolls, it would make negligible difference from the November 2022 voting rolls). People register before elections, not after. Even if people had moved between November 2022 and January 2023 they would not have updated their registration.

    Election staff in larger counties are going to be more professional. They are going to have lawyers to consult, and people with the time to read memos from the SOS. In a smaller county, the director of elections Madie Simpleton will have been in that position since 1973, and probably needs new bifocals. She like you may believe she does not need to read the memo. But there may be no signatures from her county.

  50. Bob. Don’t be silly. Bots are not he or she. They’re not supposed to vote, either,since they’re not human. When they do get to vote, it’s certainly not for Trump.

    Your question makes no sense. The AZ BOT spewed out some nonsense, just like any other AZ comment. That doesn’t make it a human, a man, a voter, or much less, a Trump voting man.

    Is there any part of this you are having trouble with? If so, are you a retard? If not, you are also a bot – same bot as AZ, maybe, maybe not.

  51. OH VOTER REGISTRATIONS TRANSFERRED IF VOTER MOVES WITHIN OHIO ???

    OR VOTER HAS TO GIVE NOTICE TO NEW/OLD CLERKS ??? TIME DELAYS IN UPDATES ???
    —
    AZ WILL N-O-T BE VOTING FOR T-Y-R-A-N-T TRUMP.

  52. Jim Riley: thank you for your opinions regards how to run petition drives. I can tell you haven’t done it.

    Do you know how I can tell? When you get 100,000 signatures, you will get signature from every county in the state (well, maybe not in Texas, since you have 250something counties with some under 100 population. But even in Texas, you would get ALMOST every county on a petition drive that size.

    Not because you would physically have people deployed in all those counties. But because you would catch folks from all of them when they are wherever you do have people.

    Your analysis neglects exact where and how signatures are collected. There are no rights on private property in most states, Ohio included. Door to door is very slow. Permission on private property is rarely granted. Rights on public property are, in practice, a constant battle.

    So where do people go that has good steady foot traffic? A lot of times it’s places where people are from many counties, move around a lot, are in a hurry, have more than one address, are drunk, there’s a lot of out of staters, etc +– colleges, festivals, events, farmers markets, bar districts, welfare offices, public transit centers, etc.

    As a result, every Madie Simpleston in 88 counties will have signatures to check. Some actually from there county and others not.

    If you think big cities have a shortage of ignorant office heffers who don’t necessarily brush up on every last memo from someone who doesn’t actually sign their pay check…you’ve never dealt with bureaucrats in a big city about anything.

    I don’t must mean elections. Building permits, you name it. I’ve dealt with bureaucrats in different places about different matters. All in all, I’d rather deal with Marie Simpleton than Rasheeda Attitushida, but maybe it’s just my rosy complexion.

    As far as people register. There are also these things call voter roll purges. You may have heard of them, or not. I think you probably have. I gather you’re a smart fellow and something of an election expert yourself.

  54. @Ray,

    You are mixed up on the timing of the petition and the No Labels-LaRose incident.

    The petition examination was in 2023.

    LaRose announced for the Senate on June 17, 2023. He was the initial polling leader based on name recognition. The incident with No Labels happened in March of 2024.

    Liz Morrison, co-director of No Labels used an e-mail to invite the recipients to a virtual call with Frank LaRose. LaRose denies that there was going to be such a phone call. The leak of the e-mail resulted in the attack against LaRose of being a RINO, and his attempted defense.

    In a 3-way race, Bernie Moreno had the Trump endorsement and that of multiple Senators, including J.D. Vance, and Vivek Ramaswamy, who is from Ohio; the establishment Republican Matt Dolan, who had the endorsements of Governor Mike DeWine and former Senator Rob Portman, and hardly anyone else; and Frank LaRose who had the endorsement of one congressman.

    LaRose was badly underfunded: Dolan $11M, Moreno $10M, and LaRose $2M.

    I don’t know if the phone call was going to happen. I don’t know why No Labels was involved.

    Which of the following does not apply to the group?

    (a) No Labels
    (b) No Grass Roots Support
    (c) No Brains
    (d) No Money

  56. Oops sorry.

    Not a trick question.

    They had lots of money.

    I jumped the gun. Didn’t make it all the way to the end. It’s like high school all over again, LOL

  57. Oops sorry again. Trick question after all. A and D both don’t not apply. They have a label. “No Labels” is a label. And money.

    Brains and grassroots support, not so much. I’m actually pretty detail oriented too, maybe just a lot slower than you.

  58. Thanks. We have ruled out LaRose revenge as a motive. There are still many other possible explanations, above.

    Not sure what our recently concluded Senate primary has to do with No Labels petition validity. Both in Ohio, and Frank LaRose was in both, but in unrelated ways.

    I knew a lot of what you said about the primary already, other than Vivek being from Ohio. I did not know that. It wouldn’t have changed my Trump vote, and he’s still not one of my favorites for VP.

    BUT how does any of that help us figure out the mystery here? LOL

  61. The first No Labels Party petition drive was in Arizona and it started around April of 2022.

  62. Ok so none in 2021. That’s what I thought.

    So who was the initial petition company? Arno? JSM? Young Political Majors? Or..

  63. @Ray,

    Ohio requires individual petition sections to be signed by county. The form for new minor parties is

    https://www.ohiosecretaryofstate.gov/globalassets/elections/forms/4-a.pdf

    It has space for a header with the purpose of the petition including the sponsors, 43 signatures, and the circulator’s affidavit.

    The memo which you did not read directs county election officials to send petition part to the county which has the most signers. It appears that there is an interpretation of the statute that permits signatures to be counted for one county only. So if there was a petition part with 35 Franklin and 8 Delaware signatures, only 35 signatures may be counted and will be validated by Franklin County, even though a mix of a signatures is a technical violation of the statute, which has probably already been litigated.

    If I were circulating in Columbus, I would have sheets for Franklin, and maybe Delaware, Licking, and Fairfield. Perhaps for Union, Madison, and Pickaway. Or I might just have blank sheets that I will start based on whoever I encounter. That one signature from Vinton is going to be a nuisance.

    I’m still going to circulate in Franklin, Hamilton, Cuyahoga, Montgomery, Lucas, and Summit. That’s where the voters are, particularly those more inclined to sign a No Labels petition.

    It is possible that No Labels petition lost signatures based on the single county rule. Lazy Circulator hired by national contractor may not have understood the Ohio requirement or simply not cared. The contractor may have been paid regardless of whether No Labels qualifiied. Remember No Labels has lots of money, and not so much lots of brains. They’re an easy mark for an unscrupulous vendor.

    Ohio updates its voter rolls daily. It is actually trivial to go back a couple of months.

  64. @AZ,

    Ohio and every other state (except ND) maintains a statewide voter roll. This is federal law.

    Ohio has online voter registration and online update of registration.

    Voter rolls are updated daily.

  65. Jim – thanks for the tips. I know how the form looks, how it’s validated, and where to go. I know how many signatures from which counties to expect when circulating in which locations within which counties. But thanks fofr the tips.

  66. Updated daily refers to new registration and occasional removal of dead person, someone who moved and bothered to notify etc. There are also purges,which can be controversial, where the state proactively checks whether a lot of people still live where they’re registered, etc. These don’t happen daily.

  67. I know in Michigan the last several election cycles have included issues of campaigns hiring paid petitioners and the petioners have just forged a bunch of signatures to get paid and then the campaigns have got disqualified. My understanding is a lot of these companies go state-to-state so I wouldn’t be surprised if this continues. That’s how Michigan ended up with the incumbent representative not qualifying for the primary in ’12 and like five candidates disqualified from the Reublican GOP primary in ’22 including the only two that appeared to have a chance of actually beating the least popular Michigan governor since they started tracking that stuff.

  69. @Ray,

    Richard Winger said over 100,000 signatures were submitted, but less than 40,000 were validated. It is possible that his source exaggerated 100,000.

    We can assume that 60,000+ were (1) duplicate; (2) by signers who were no longer registered when the signatures were submitted in November (e.g. between July when they had signed, the signer had died; moved to another address; been convicted of a felony, etc.); (3) were by non-registered persons; (5) violated the one-county rule; (6) were fake; (7) were illegible; or (8) had invalid circulator affidavits.

    If we wanted to collect 40,000 signatures on a pro rata basis we would collect 4413 in Franklin, and 42 in Vinton. But we also know that voters in urban and suburban areas are more susceptible to No Labels. Voters in rural areas have more common sense and are generally more conservative, likely to have pictures of McKinley or Taft on their kitchen walls. Rather than try to directly get signatures from Vinton, you are going to get more signatures from more populous areas.

    I was in error about the voter files being updated daily. They are updated weekly. I happened to check them on 4/27/2024 (Saturday) which was when the weekly update was made.

    Imagine that A.B. dies; the divorce of C.D. becomes final and she goes back to a former name C.E.; G.H. turns 18, and his parents I.H. and J.H. insist that he register; and that L.M. moves from Xenia to Zanesville; and assume there is official notice of these events. The Voter Roll for 5/3/2024 will be updated with these changes.

    If I search for A.B., I will find that he is no longer registered, and I will be able to find C.E., but not C.D., etc.

    If I were a reputable petitioning contractor in Ohio, I would download the files and have an App. I want to make sure a signer is registered to vote, under the name and address they are providing me. This App would also help me avoid duplicate signers.

    I want the name and address on the petition to match what is on the voter roll. The address is particularly important in Ohio since the petitions do not include a hand-printed name. If the petition says scrawly-sig at 123 Oak, Anytown, OH, there is no chance that an election official will spend much time trying to decipher scrawly-sig. If they can find a voter at 123 Oak, Anytown they will then check for the signature match.

    I would politely ask the signer for their address and check it. I would politely ask if they had moved. If they say yes, I would help them to update their address so they won’t have a hassle voting. If they are not registered, I would help them register. Both of these can be done online.

    It appears that this statewide electronic voter roll did not occur until 2017. Petition drives you may have been involved in or were aware of may have been before this change.

    Because the voter rolls are updated weekly, it would have been trivial for all 88 counties to use the November 4, 2022 voter rolls.

    Ohio does not purge voter rolls in election years. They don’t like contempt citations.

    Instead they identify voters who have not voted in recent elections, and send them a non-forward-able mail. If they don’t get a response they send a forward-able postcard. In some cases they will get a response (e.g., we moved to Florida, or to a different Ohio county). They have to get an affirmative response in order to actually make a change to the voter roll. If you go to a voter’s address, and search in the heating ducts and under the seat cushions of the new tenants, you still can not presume the voter no longer lives there.

    But for these voters you were unable to contact, you place them in “inactive” status. If they don’t participate through the next two general elections, you can then purge them. Note that the memo you have not read directed a signing of the No Labels petition to restore a voter to the active voter roll.

    Ohio purged 26K voters in September 2023. These were probably voters who had been identified as “inactive” in 2019, and did not vote in 2020 or 2022.

  70. Thanks, Jim Riley. Your comments helped me find the answer I was looking for, especially the last one

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