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Voter Fraud: What is Ohio doing to prevent it from happening here?

Is there really an issue of people manipulating the polls?

Cleveland — With the midterm elections just a week away, the conversation has again turned to voter fraud. Last weekend, President Trump tweeted a serious warning to anyone thinking of tampering with the election.

But is there really an issue of people manipulating the polls?

There have only been three times in modern history, where there were serious questions about election rigging.

In 1960 there were accusations of ballot stuffing. There were the hanging chads in 2000. And Russian hacking accusations in 2016.

Ohio has taken serious measures to prevent anything from happening here, implementing several layers of protection for in-person and absentee ballot voting.

To start, everyone has to produce proof of name, address, birthday, a driver’s license or Social Security number, and a signature that matches the one the Board of Elections has on file.

According to Mike West, Manager of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections Outreach Department, "Voter fraud is very rare and it’s very difficult. To borrow the Secretary of State’s phrase, ‘in Ohio it is easy to vote and hard to cheat’."

We looked into this after a number of voters in Lorain County didn't get their absentee ballots, including Bob Eden of North Ridgeville who told us, “When they mentioned several other cities (had this problem) I thought, that just does not sound right."

Then, we noticed that the ballots for Cuyahoga County read, "If your ballot was already marked, please call us."

We thought there might be an issue, but were told that language has existed for years. It’s required by Ohio's Revised Code to ensure no one got to your mail and filled out the ballot. And we couldn't find any widespread reports of that kind of fraud.

But then another voter told us, their ballot arrived with one of the pages missing: The one which included the Governor’s race.

West said, "If there was something wrong with the ballot, or say he marked the ballot and realized he made a mistake, we would move heaven and earth to try to accommodate him."

In 2016, Secretary of State Jon Husted launched an initiative to root out potential fraud.

In a public service announcement, Husted said, "We addressed this by removing 1.7 million duplicate registrations, and more than 580,000 deceased voters from the rolls."

And anyone whose ballot signature doesn't match what's on record, or who requested an absentee ballot and shows up to vote, gets a provisional ballot, which is put aside until after the election.

According to West, "If there’s a bad actor out there and they do something like try to vote twice, it's very easy to trace.”

That gentleman from Lorain County ended up getting his ballot in time to vote. As for a ballot where something is wrong, or even if you made a mistake, your best bet is to go down to your Board of Elections and they can reissue a new one. If you can’t make it down, you can call, and they will try to help you out.

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