In sports, it’s technically called a simulation, but fans affectionately call it the soccer flop.
American politics has developed its own version of these theatrics. Every partisan disagreement is treated as a crisis, maybe even an existential threat to democracy. Opponents aren’t just wrong, they’re dangerous.
Like the soccer flop, the hyperbolic performance is meant to influence the referee, or in this case, the public.
This political tactic has been on full display since I announced that Ohio is collaborating with the U.S. Department of Justice to verify the accuracy of our voter rolls. Setting aside partisan posturing, the department is widely viewed as the world’s top law enforcement agency, and its primary role is to enforce federal laws, including elections.
While the U.S. Constitution assigns most responsibility for election administration to the states, Congress retains the authority to regulate federal elections. And federal laws have been enacted on everything from voter registration to voting equipment.
The Department of Justice has every right to ensure those laws are upheld.
Unfortunately, past administrations neglected this duty, so when the department offered to assist, I welcomed the opportunity to discuss it. We had already been working to obtain federal death and citizenship records for use in verifying Ohio’s voter rolls, so assistance from the Justice Department could only help.
The federal government’s latest approach to collaborating with states on election integrity is a refreshing change of pace. Two years ago, I filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration after it refused to grant states lawful access to federal citizenship records for use in verifying voter eligibility.
That administration has since left office, and the current administration’s Department of Homeland Security then settled our lawsuit, agreeing to provide states with 20 years of no-cost access to these vital federal records. The department has since collaborated with my office to investigate evidence of noncitizen voting activity in our state.
As that work continued, the Department of Justice asked to review our voter rolls to help us ensure they comply with federal law. This is where the soccer flop comes in. For whatever reason, critics have fired up their outrage machine with an epic meltdown over this collaboration. I can only ask what they want to hide, or more directly, which illegally registered voters they want to protect.
To be clear, I have a statutory duty to maintain the accuracy of the statewide voter registration database. Ohio’s voter rolls have been public records since 2006. You can download them from our website. The non-public portion of the records contains the same kinds of information that thousands of local, state and federal government agencies use every day to verify identities, confirm eligibility for public programs and match records across databases. These checks are routine and secure.
Cross-checking our voter records is also nothing new. Ohio law allows me to securely enter into data-sharing agreements with other states, which we’ve been doing for years. So the outrage here is both hyperbolic and hypocritical. The same critics opposing our collaboration with the Department of Justice previously had no problem with Ohio sending its voter records to the private data firm known as ERIC, which coordinated a data exchange between states. I ended the ERIC contract when its leaders refused to improve their data integrity standards.
They also had no problem inviting the Department of Justice to monitor Ohio’s polling places in 2022 and 2024. It seems that verifying the integrity of our registration database is a hypocritical bridge too far.
Perhaps it’s not the disclosure of Ohio’s voter list to federal law enforcement that they find so offensive, but rather the effort to ensure it doesn’t contain illegal voters. Cue the soccer flop.
Frank LaRose is Ohio’s 51st Secretary of State.