These Ohioans challenged thousands of voters. Here's who's behind the effort and why

At a recent hearing of an elections board in Ohio's Wood County, Ted Bowlus stood up and explained that he is, in fact, a registered Ohio voter.

"Would you require any more evidence than what I presented?" Bowlus asked election officials when he finished his pitch.

"No, sir," Republican board member Doug Ruck replied. "Your name's on the plaque right behind me."

Bowlus is also a Wood County commissioner.

He and Ruck were among nearly 17,000 voters in the northwest Ohio county − about 20% of its voting population − to have their registration challenged days before early voting began in the Nov. 5 election. Ohio law allows individuals to contest another person's right to vote, which is designed to catch ineligible voters who may get overlooked during typical voter roll maintenance.

But Wood County isn't alone. Lorain County fielded about 1,000 challenges on Oct. 4 as election staff prepared for their busiest time of year. Since the summer, challenges have reached the Democratic strongholds of Hamilton and Franklin counties and more conservative areas such as Butler County, which received more than 3,000 of them.

The impact is practical and political.

Local election officials must review all the challenges that come before them, which takes time, staff and taxpayer dollars. Sometimes they result in action: Wood County, for instance, removed two voters confirmed to be deceased. But more often than not, the challenges get rejected − usually because they don't adhere to federal law.

Then there's the politics. Many of the challenges appear to stem from organizations that questioned the 2020 election and emboldened people nationwide to pick apart voter rolls. The challengers and groups advising them say election integrity is their No. 1 priority, but critics fear their actions could fuel dire consequences.

"The groundwork is being laid to question the validity and integrity of the election," said Freda Levenson, legal director for the ACLU of Ohio.

Ohio counties see uptick in voter challenges ahead of 2024 election

Ohio's boards of elections, which are composed of two Republicans and two Democrats, wrestled with these challenges for months.

The Hamilton County Board of Elections has received more than 400 voter challenges since August. Most of them came from one resident, Nancy Strzelecki, of Cleves, a small village west of Cincinnati near the Ohio River. In an average year, the board would get less than five voter challenges, elections officials said.

Election officials and legal experts say citizens like Strzelecki, advised by the Election Integrity Network and other conservative groups, use third-party websites to comb public data and find what they deem to be duplicate registrations or errors. The Election Integrity Network was started by Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer and ally of former President Donald Trump who supported his efforts to dispute the 2020 election results.

Challengers in Franklin County targeted voters who were linked to homeless shelters or addresses with dilapidated homes, Franklin County Board of Elections spokesman Aaron Sellers said. In Strzelecki's case, she looked up voters' graves on findagrave.com , an online repository of final resting places. She physically traveled to mailing centers and places some people have put as addresses to verify that they aren't residences.

"We have access to national change of address information and we are aware of the North Carolina Board of Elections and other sites…you're able to go in and put in people's names and put in their voting history," Strzelecki said during a Sept. 4 Hamilton County Board of Elections meeting. "It's just a matter of us doing research."

Hamilton County officials said of the 428 voters challenged, most didn't respond to letters sent out by the board of elections. The board flagged 334 voters whose registration was challenged, meaning if they show up to vote this year, they’ll have to sign a form swearing they are Ohio residents and haven't voted anywhere else. Then they can cast a ballot.

Only one person showed up to the board's September meeting to contest a challenge: John Girardot, who said he had relocated to North Carolina but moved back to Hamilton County and intends to vote.

Strzelecki conceded that she hasn't found any voters who committed fraud, and no one has been removed from the rolls as a result of her efforts. But she sees that as a positive.

"The good thing is, none of these people that we've presented to the board have voted more than once in an election," Strzelecki said. "Maybe they voted out of state, but they didn't vote in two states, so there's been no fraud."

Are last-minute challenges legal?

While Strzelecki described the Election Integrity Network as helping boards of elections, some election officials say it doesn't accomplish much of anything. In Butler County, the challenges caused confusion and resulted in about 20 people being kicked off the rolls.

Butler County Board of Elections Director Nicole Unzicker said the board purged 20 people over the summer after someone filed a challenge showing they were registered in Michigan. The county prosecutor later determined that boards must stick to the removal process outlined in the Voting Rights Act , which requires election officials to ensure the person hasn't voted in the state for at least four years.

"It was a new process to us," Unzicker said. "We had not received anything like this, so our prosecutors were looking into that."

Unzicker didn't want to say whether the challenges helped or hindered the cleaning of the voter rolls. While she said the challenges may have uncovered some duplicate voter records, it delayed staff members in work they were already doing.

Legal concerns over the challenges intensified as Election Day grew nearer. Federal law prohibits states from conducting voter roll maintenance within 90 days of an election, which is why Ohio completed its latest purge by Aug. 2. That deadline also applies to "list maintenance programs based on third-party challenges derived from any large, computerized data-matching process," according to the Department of Justice .

Voting rights advocates in Ohio, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and Brennan Center for Justice, penned a letter to Secretary of State Frank LaRose earlier this month to sound the alarm. They argued that election officials in some counties violated federal law by purging voters who allegedly had moved based on these challenges.

In one case, the Delaware County Board of Elections deadlocked on a vote to approve 241 challenges based on third-party sources, which meant LaRose had to break the tie. LaRose rejected the challenges "due to insufficient evidence presented," according to a letter he sent to Delaware County Board of Elections Director Karla Herron.

"The challenge process is explicitly outlined by Ohio law and has been in place for nearly 20 years," LaRose spokesperson Dan Lusheck said in an email. "Our system is more accountable because of it. The Secretary commends the citizens who are passionate about the integrity of our elections, as having accurate and up-to-date voter rolls is a core tenant of any well-run election."

Delaware County separately voted to remove 84 people from the rolls, which the ACLU and Brennan Center said is illegal. Herron did not respond to an interview request.

The people behind Ohio voter challenges

Beyond the legal questions, election officials say the challenges haven't caught anything that wouldn't otherwise be uncovered. Boards of elections routinely check a national database that shows changes in voter addresses, death records and people who haven't engaged in voter activity for years, said Alex Linser, deputy director with the Hamilton County Board of Elections.

Still, challengers and the groups supporting them say this is an important piece of the puzzle.

"Any cases of potentially unlawful voters in Ohio that are not challenged is not fair to lawful Ohio voters," Kerri Toloczko, executive director of the Election Integrity Network, said in an email. "Election Integrity Network is a platform that brings together citizens concerned with the proper administration of elections from around the country, and we have been honored to work with many of these citizens in Ohio."

Wood County resident Taina Romstadt, who brought the nearly 17,000 challenges in her county, said she's spoken with the Election Integrity Network and its Ohio affiliate but maintained that she's investigating voter rolls as an individual. Strzelecki declined to offer specifics about the group's meetings but said it's all volunteers and provides guidance and data lists to aid their work.

Both women said concerns about election integrity pushed them to get more involved.

"2020 was an awakening for me," Romstadt said. "So it was from that point forward, seeking alternative news sources and meeting people and networking and learning and ... putting those thoughts and interests and passions to something that I could physically do to help."

Election officials also want to prevent voter fraud and frequently tout Ohio's voting system as one of the best in the nation. Third-party challenges do have a role in the process, they say − but not when people drop thousands of them just days before a major election, with little evidence to back them up.

Now, some worry the challenges are planting even more seeds of doubt ahead of a hotly contested presidential election.

"Individuals are going to go out there and spin this as though election officials don’t care," said Paul Adams, director of the Lorain County Board of Elections. "That is what I think is going to be very, very harmful for us because going into this election, people are already questioning election officials."

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: These Ohioans challenged thousands of voters. Here's who's behind the effort and why