Written By : Warner Todd Huston

A just finished audit has shown that massive fraud and multiple violations of Ohio’s voting law has been uncovered in a recent ballot initiative effort. Among other violations, 47 felons were hired illegally by the advocacy group SmokeFree America to collect signatures for issue five, a ballot initiative to ban smoking in Ohio’s small businesses. Kidnappers, thieves and rapists were hired to collect signatures and addresses despite the fact that Ohio election law prohibits felons from working as petition workers. Additionally, the smoking ban was approved for being included on the Ohio ballot by state officials despite the fact that thousands of signatures were invalid and despite the fact that SmokeFree America did not meet lawful requirements. These violations were easily discovered and some of them were known by officials proving that complicit state officials quietly supported the ballot push and turned a blind eye to law breaking by the anti-smoking advocacy group.

Ohio election law prohibits convicted felons from working as petition workers, yet 47 felons have been discovered as employees of SmokeFree America in its Ohio effort. Of these felons several were convicted of rape, one accused of raping a child. Alarmingly, SmokeFree America exposed Ohio residents to rapists who were collecting their signatures and addresses! There were also forgers and thieves collecting signatures and addresses of Ohio residents. Other criminal actions by petition workers: arson, burglary, breaking and entering, weapons violations, kidnapping, drug violations, drug trafficking, grand theft, etc.

The petitions also had multiple violations of Ohio election law. Some petitions were signed by those paid to circulate the petitions — a violation of the law — and their addresses were given as hotels instead of the required permanent home addresses. Also some were out-of-state signatories instead of Ohio residents.

There were also multiple violations of petition worker’s reporting forms (form 15s). In some cases petition workers didn’t file any form 15s at all, in other cases the form was filed after petitions were counted as valid, and in still other cases, the petition workers did not properly list the petition company they were working for on the form 15s reports. In each and every case, petitions should have been thrown out that were collected by paid petition workers who did not file a legal the correct form 15s yet these petitions were not invalidated by state officials.

Further, there were serious mathematical errors in tabulating the final count of valid signatures and many of the invalid petitions were counted as legitimate. Thousands of signatures were legally invalid but were accepted by the Ohio Secretary of State’s office anyway.

Finally, the Ohio Secretary of State’s office approved the inclusion of Issue five 20 days before the petitions were received — as incorrect as they are — and almost a month before they were approved as valid. This means the Sec. of State approved of the ballot initiative before authorities even had determined that SmokeFree America had satisfied the legal requirements to qualify for inclusion on the ballot.

It seems patently clear that the Ohio Secretary of State’s office had determined to add issue five to the ballot whether or not all legal challenges were satisfied.

Local Ohio business owner Pam Parker goes over some of the violations and numbers in a recent video:

(Cross posted at BigGovernment.com)

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