We Stand for Free and Fair Elections in Ohio

On June 11, federal law enforcement officials raided the Cleveland office of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a nonprofit that helps underrepresented communities to vote and conducted one of the biggest voter registration efforts in Ohio in 2024. Agents seized computers and documents. According to a board member of the organization, over 100 FBI and DHS agents were involved in these actions across the state, including showing up at the homes of people who had worked with the organization to question them about its activities and seek information about alleged voter fraud.

We do not yet know what legal basis was claimed for these actions. But their apparent scale and scope are alarming, as is the timing, in the months before our upcoming elections. These actions appear designed to chill civic participation and undermine the integrity of the vote itself. 

The chilling effect may be intended, but it will not be accepted. The right to register voters, knock on doors, and organize your neighbors is not a Democratic right or a Republican right. It is an American right. Ohioans of every party have a stake in protecting it, and Ohioans do not surrender that stake easily.

Ohio is not alone. These actions are part of a broader pattern. In January, FBI agents searched an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, seizing hundreds of boxes of 2020 election ballots and records, under a search warrant sought by a Missouri federal prosecutor with no background in the federal government in election law or election-related cases. Federal agents have also interviewed current and former election officials in Wisconsin about the 2020 presidential election, obtained grand jury subpoenas related to the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona, investigated voting machines in Puerto Rico, and launched voter fraud investigations related to the recent primary elections in California.

That is the context in which Ohio now finds itself. 

Our founding letter — signed by lawyers and civic leaders in every major Ohio city, including five former Ohio Attorneys General — was written for moments like this one, when a timely and principled response still matters. We wrote that "waiting until constitutional violations are undeniable and irreversible is not prudence; it is abdication."

We call on Ohio's elected officials, regardless of party, to seek a full accounting of the legal authority behind this action, its scope, and the basis for it. 

We call on the legal community to ask hard questions and stand ready to act. The use of law enforcement to intimidate voters and civic organizations has no place in our state or our country.

And we call on all Ohioans to defend free and fair elections — not as a partisan cause, but as the foundation on which every other right rests.

Ohioans for the Rule of Law pledges to do everything within its power to help ensure that our elections this fall are free, fair, and trusted by all, regardless of the outcome. That is not a partisan commitment. It is an American one.

We invite you to join our movement. Now is the time. Ohioans for the Rule of Law will continue to monitor this situation, work with communities across the state, and use this platform to keep Ohioans informed about what must be done to ensure that this and similar situations are resolved in accordance with the Constitution.