‘This Is Fraud’: Ohio Investigators Eye Suspect Voter Registrations

Earlier this year, Cincinnati-area voters Cassandra and Harry Scott were puzzled to receive voter registration updates showing they had changed their address. They hadn’t. 

The Hamilton County Board of Elections had received two registration forms for the voters from Black Fork Strategies LLC, an Ohio-based “engagement firm that focuses on all aspects of community and electoral field work.” Elections Board staff made the requested changes in the voter rolls and, per Ohio law, sent notice to the voters at their “new address.” That’s when Cassandra and Harry Scott showed up at the BOE office. 

“Both of those voters appeared at our office during normal business hours after receiving those acknowledgement cards. The new address that was submitted on these registration cards was actually the place of business for Ms. Cassandra,” Elections Board Director Sherry Poland told Hamilton BOE members at a meeting last month. “She had not moved and did not complete the registration form.”

‘Trying to Defraud the Elections’

The false form was one of many suspect voter registration issues tied to the left-wing Black Fork Strategies. Election Board staff reached out to the company, which “provided information” on the canvasser responsible for the Scotts’ voter registration forms, Poland said. 

“We also received a registration form in the name of Henry Kissinger,” the elections official said at the public meeting. The statement was greeted by a smatter of laugher from some in attendance, likely at the thought of the late and renowned U.S. secretary of state registering to vote in Hamilton County. Staff compared the Kissinger listed on the form to voter registration and Bureau of Motor Vehicle databases. It was a mismatch every time, Poland said. Staff had more questions for Black Fork. 

Then Poland held up a thick stack of voter registrations. They all appeared to be in the same handwriting, and were submitted by the same canvasser. Poland did not return a request for comment from The Federalist, but she told her board at the July meeting that BOE staff met with Black Fork’s regional manager for Hamilton County to “show her what we were seeing and what was being submitted by her organization.”  

“We’re now bringing this to the board to see what next steps the board would like to take, and it would appear these need further investigation,” Poland said. The board agreed. 

“The first thing I want to point out is, you know, we use words like ‘anomalies,’ ‘suspicion,’ and everything else because we try to be PC, I guess. But this is fraud, outright fraudulent behavior,” said Hamilton County Board of Elections member Alex Triantafilou, who also serves as chairman of the Ohio Republican Party. “Who’s responsible or how they’re responsible, that will be up to somebody other than me. It’s plain and obvious to me when you get this many registration cards [holds up the stack] with the very same handwriting that someone is trying to defraud the elections process in Hamilton County.” 

Not just Hamilton County. Election integrity issues involving employees of a leftist company committed to “Building Long-Term Progressive Power,” have been popping up all over Ohio. 

‘A Bad Reputation’

Earlier this month, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced he had had referred evidence of suspected election law violations to 20 county prosecutors “for review and possible criminal prosecution.” The violations, according to the secretary of state’s office, involve the collection of petition forms in support of a minor political party and to place a left-led referendum on redistricting on the November ballot. Citizens Not Politicians is pushing the constitutional amendment to create a 15-member “citizen” redistricting commission. LaRose is also asking the local prosecutors to investigate allegations of fraudulent voter registration forms like those submitted in Hamilton County. 

Black Fork is also under a dark cloud in Cuyahoga County, home to Cleveland, where the local board of elections reported at least 18 suspicious voter registration cards. Cuyahoga County Board of Elections Director Anthony Perlatti told members at a June 21, 2023 meeting that “multiple counties have encountered issues with potential registration cards being submitted from deceased individuals,” according to minutes from a June 21, 2023 Cuyahoga County Board of Elections meeting. 

Butler County Prosecuting Attorney Mike Gmoser this week told me that his office has received a referral from the secretary of state. 

“It does involve a document with [suspect] signatures and we are seeking the verifications of all the signatures that were harvested and submitted to the Board of Elections,” he said in a phone interview.

Cuyahoga County elections officials asked LaRose’s Public Integrity Division to investigate the suspicious voter registration cards in July 2023. The Board of Elections and Cuyahoga County’s prosecuting attorney did not return The Federalist’s requests for comments. Election integrity advocates have criticized LaRose for, in their estimation, moving too slowly on the complaints. 

“If LaRose’s new team of special investigators handles the Hamilton County referral as quickly as it has Cuyahoga County’s case from a year ago, the board in Cincinnati may expect an answer in time for the 2028 presidential elections,” watchdog Ken McEntee jabbed in a Substack piece earlier this month. 

Dan Lushek, spokesman for the secretary of state, said the agency cannot comment extensively on active investigations, but he did confirm the matter is under review by the agency’s Public Integrity Division.

“Black Fork Strategies has had a bad reputation for a while, and it’s no secret that we’ve referred its operatives to the appropriate authorities for further investigation and possible prosecution,” Lushek said in an email response to The Federalist. He noted the referrals have been happening on “a rolling basis as they occur.” 

“The boards of elections in Cuyahoga and Hamilton counties have also made similar referrals to their respective county prosecutors,” the spokesman said. 

‘Committed to Fair Elections’ 

Black Fork Strategies officials did not return a request for comment. The company did release a statement saying that it is cooperating with elections officials on all requests for information regarding Black Fork’s voter registration program. The statement, published at WOUB Public Media’s website, boldly asserts, “The petitions in question were NOT submitted by Black Fork Strategies.” 

“Because we are committed to fair elections, we have provided Secretary LaRose’s office information regarding former canvassers and our internal quality control process,” the company said. The company added that it has “not engaged in any large-scale petition operations” in 2023 and this election year. 

“Black Fork Strategies take any allegations of possible voter registration fraud seriously and cooperates with investigations,” Black Fork’s statement concludes. 

Left Connections

The Kent, Ohio-based company, according to the secretary of state’s business filing page, is owned by Kirk Noden, a “veteran community organizer who has successfully founded community organizations in Chicago, Birmingham England, and Ohio,” according to his bio on the webpage of the Democracy & Power Innovation Fund. The DPI Fund is a partnership of some very far-left groups, including Voces de la Frontera, Wisconsin-based BLOC (Black Leaders Organizing Communities) and the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, whose board of directors Noden serves on.  

“In his twenty years as an organizer, he’s led campaigns on a variety of issues from securing fair and affordable housing to criminal justice reform to raising the wages of retail workers,” Noden’s bio states. “Currently, Kirk directs a set of movement aligned and owned LLCs including a consulting co-op that advises an array of national and state donors, a field vendor executes large scale electoral programs, and a social justice taproom and Mexican Kitchen that houses the Drink Your Values project.”

He also serves on the board of Policy Matters Ohio, a left-wing think tank, and is the treasurer of the Safety and Justice Action PAC, “which focuses on electing and supporting progressive prosecutors across the country.”

His for-profit “engagement firm” focuses on “voter engagement and registration, petition collection, canvas programs, and door-to-door campaign work,” according to Black Fork Strategies’ website. The company asserts that it is “committed to paying a living wage and employing people as hourly and salaried employees.” 

“Field work is inevitably investigated and challenged by opponents seeking to undermine democracy. BFS is battle-tested, with systems to protect program integrity, ensure rigorous and legal compliance activities, and provide partner protection,” the website claims.  

‘Address the Threat’ 

More than 50 Ohio election integrity activists, lawmakers, conservative group leaders and concerned citizens recently signed on to a letter to LaRose detailing “threats to election integrity in our state.” The Open Letter of Concerned Citizens and Voters of Ohio — including signatories and endorsers from the Ohio Freedom Action Network, Coalition of Concerned Voters of Ohio, and the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC), specifically notes the Black Fork Strategies controversy. 

The letter raises an important question: Why are investigators reportedly only looking into canvassers and not the company that hired and trained them? To paraphrase a pretty famous Democrat, President Harry Truman, doesn’t the buck stop with Black Fork itself? 

“Simply stated, it is imperative that any investigation of wrongdoing extend beyond individual canvassers to encompass affiliated organizations with election officials taking immediate action to revoke canvassing activities until the outcome of the investigation and assessment of business practices is complete,” the letter states. 

Lushek said the secretary of state’s office does not have the authority to file criminal charges; that’s up to prosecutors. The agency also has no legal authority to shut down an organization based on an allegation of misconduct, he said. 

“That would require statutory authority that can only be granted by the state legislature, assuming it doesn’t violate a constitutional right of due process,” the spokesman said. 

He told me that the secretary of state’s Public Integrity Division’s investigations have led the company to “terminate the employment of those individuals we have questioned, as well as more recently laying off all canvassing staff.”

The concerned citizen letter also asks LaRose to take immediate steps “to address the threat of noncitizen registration and voting in the 2024 elections.” 

“Ohio’s election eligibility verification procedures permit third-party advocacy groups in the state to register thousands, if not tens of thousands, of ineligible individuals who then become eligible to vote in Ohio elections. The Biden Administration has exacerbated the problem by aiding and abetting the importation of untold numbers of noncitizens, most of whom have entered the United States in violation of existing federal law,” the letter asserts. It calls on the secretary to implement election integrity protections, from requiring provisional ballots for registrations in dispute to identifying all voters not confirmed as eligible to vote. 

LaRose has taken issue with some of the changes election integrity advocates have sought, insisting that the legislature would have to pass laws to do so. The secretary has this election year emphasized voter roll maintenance and removal of foreign nationals from the list, but critics say there’s much more to do to truly make Ohio the “gold standard” of election administration. 

Meanwhile, potential voter registration fraud as suspected in the Black Forks incidents counter the incessant dubious claims of election integrity deniers that there’s little to no fraud in U.S. elections. 

“So to the extent that there’s any press watching, voter fraud is real, it does happen. It happens oftentimes in the form of phony registrations all in the same handwriting,” Triantafilou, the Hamilton County Board of Elections members said at the July meeting. 

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.