COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose said Friday that the state’s upcoming presidential election should be accepted by all candidates as legitimate, a response of sorts to President Donald Trump’s suggestion earlier this week that he may not leave office if loses if he doesn’t view the election results as legitimate.
LaRose, a Republican, when asked about the president’s comments said he wasn’t “going to get into” what Trump said exactly.
“I’ll say this. Ohioans know the results will be an honest result,” he said during a public appearance in Columbus during which Anheuser-Busch announced it would donate nearly 3,000 gallons of hand sanitizer to Ohio polling places. “Ninety-six percent of Ohioans say that it’s easy to vote. Large, massive numbers of Ohioans know they can trust their election result. When this thing is over, people will know it’s a true reflection of the will of the people of Ohio. And if a candidate chooses to not accept the results, I think that will look ridiculous.”
Trump has spent months calling into question voting by mail, generally focusing on states that send unsolicited ballots to voters. (In Ohio, voters must request an absentee ballot in order to get one.)
Trump also has a history of baselessly declaring election results fraudulent, like saying in November 2016 that he would have won the national popular vote had millions of undocumented immigrants not illegally voted. (A commission Trump formed to investigate voter fraud found no evidence it had occurred on a widespread basis. Then-Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican who is now lieutenant governor, testified before the commission in 2017 that only a few hundred votes out of millions cast since 2012 in Ohio had been flagged as problematic.)
Trump’s history, combined with his refusal earlier this week to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, has prompted some Republican and Democratic leaders to vow they would respect the results of the election.
“We’re going to have to see what happens,” Trump said Wednesday. “You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster.”
Biden, meanwhile, has predicted Trump will “try to steal the election” by making a case against mail-in voting. But he has said he will accept the results if votes are fully counted.
Another factor adding to the uncertainty is the likelihood of record mail ballots being cast, which could cause a delay in knowing who won the election if the race is close.
For instance, in Ohio, mail ballots are still counted as long as they are postmarked the day before the election, and as long as they arrive within 10 days after the election. This allows for ballots to still count if there are delays in delivering the mail. If the margin of outstanding ballots on election night is significantly larger than the leading candidate’s margin of victory, it would mean the decisive results may not be known until Nov. 24, when the state’s final election results are certified.
Ohio boards of elections already have received at least 1.8 million absentee applications, compared to 805,000 at the same time in 2016.
That’s why LaRose said he decided to prominently display the number of outstanding absentee ballots when the state reports election results after polls close at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 3.
“With that kind of transparency, if someone is ahead by 100,000 votes and there are 200,000 outstanding absentee ballots and someone declares victory, that’s ridiculous on its face because you can’t tell yet because there’s still too many ballots to count,” LaRose said Friday. “So that’s why we’re making sure this is completely transparent.”
Gov Mike DeWine, a Republican, on Thursday expressed confidence that Trump would not refuse to leave office if he loses.
“That is not going to happen,” said DeWine, a Republican who is an honorary co-chair of Trump’s Ohio campaign. “Whoever loses, once the votes are counted and if any recounts or anything are done...and it’s determined that we have a winner, then the loser goes off stage. That’s the way our system works.”
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Secretary of State Frank LaRose: Ohio voters will accept state’s election results as legitimate - cleveland.com
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