American Oversight Reaches Settlement in Lawsuit Against Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose

After months of mediation, American Oversight reached a settlement in its lawsuit against Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose for records related to the 2023 decision to withdraw Ohio from a nonpartisan voter-roll maintenance tool. 

During the course of the lawsuit, LaRose and his office provided records responsive to American Oversight’s requests. American Oversight had sued in June 2023 after LaRose’s office failed to fully respond to public records requests as required by Ohio law, in some cases delaying responding for nearly nine months.

American Oversight’s requests sought a variety of records, including LaRose’s calendars and communications about LaRose’s decision to withdraw from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a bipartisan, secure, and well-functioning system of voter registration data-sharing. 

ERIC was a non-controversial nonprofit that quietly helped states clean up their voter rolls by securely comparing voter data. A cascade of misinformation, coordinated by anti-democratic activists, eventually led several states to withdraw. American Oversight’s investigation and the documents obtained show how election officials defended ERIC behind the scenes while publicly caving to a pressure campaign led by some of the same people who sought to keep former President Trump in power in 2020. The exodus from ERIC also led to a scramble to find a viable replacement for ERIC, and in the process election denial activists have been pushing their own alternatives that make it easier to challenge voting rights.

Despite praising ERIC as “one of the best fraud-fighting tools that we have” and saying that it had “provided great benefit for us,” LaRose directed Ohio to leave ERIC.

Records obtained by American Oversight revealed that other officials in his office privately expressed disagreement with the move. On the day Ohio withdrew, then-Director of Elections Amanda Grandjean wrote to ERIC Executive Director Shane Hamlin, “As you know, I really worked as hard as I possibly could to avoid this.”

The records released through the litigation shine light on the months leading up to Ohio’s departure from ERIC and LaRose’s apparent evasion of transparency by using of the encrypted Signal Messenger app to discuss government business. Following the settlement, American Oversight dismissed its case against LaRose.