Board of Elections (BOE)
1. BOE - Security Flaws Document
(2023) Due to the vulnerabilities found in the Dominion ICX machines in other states, CCVO reached out to the 12 Ohio County Board of Elections (BOE) that use the same machines.
Some of the requests that were not answered or dealt with include:
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Activate the Ohio Cyber Reserve to inspect our machines in Ohio.
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Have the Ohio Voting Machines' examiners detect and disable any wireless modems.
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Confirm that the software patch is installed and addresses the concerns mentioned above.
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Confirm that the machines do not contain the unauthorized software, MS SQL, found in others.
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Ten BOE’s did not respond at all to this request and two replied that they felt everything is fine and does not need investigating.
2. BOE Halted a Petition Drive
(2025) CCVO found the original form (Form 6D) on the Secretary of States (SOS) website that was originally used as a method to adopt the use of voting machines in Ohio. The Ohio Revised Code (law) provided three ways to adopt the voting machines; the Board of Elections (BOE), the County Commissions, and by the people of the county with a vote. The people of each county were never given a voice on this issue, the voting machines were just adopted by the BOE. The BOE’s, along with the County Prosecutors and the SOS, said the law only was for adopting the voting machines, not getting rid of them. Based on that denial we were not allowed to un-adopt what they adopted.
3. BOE's Removal of Voting Poll Managers
(2025) The Seneca County BOE told an election polling manager that she and her husband were no longer allowed to participate as precinct managers because they supported the petition drive to un-adopt the voting machines. This is a violation of their first amendment to free speech. Both Candidates, Marcell Strbich (running for Secretary of State for Ohio) and Vivek Ramaswami (running for Governor of Ohio, showed up at the Seneca BOE public meeting to chastise the BOE, and stood in support of the person relieved of their duties. That same BOE later reversed their decision to remove them. The targeted citizens did not feel comfortable resuming their roles because of the concerns with a hostile working environment. Who could blame them!
BOE Clear Blatant Misinformation
(2024) Monroe County BOE (second smallest registered voter Ohio county) was approached by a citizen to advocate for using hand counting of ballots versus the high cost of voting machines. The BOE official stated that hand counting the ballots in an off-year election would take 9 days and cost $156,718.
CCVO acquired the support document and ran the numbers using their same fixed cost and quantities. We compared other national accepted methods of hand counting to apply to the number of ballots given. CCVO came up with a revised estimate of 1 day and between $5488 to $7000 to perform the hand counting of elections that year.
One variance noted that their figure of 4217 ballots to count at their $15 per hour pay scale meant they planned to spend $76,950 to pay for hand counting. Using their own math means they would spend $18.25 to hand count each ballot. That would also imply at $15 per hour they would spend about 1hr and 15 minutes to count ONE BALLOT.