Most Ohio voters are confident that the national vote for the upcoming November election will be counted accurately. But nearly all are confident in how Ohio’s elections are run, according to new research funded by a new election-focused group with bipartisan leadership.
The statewide poll commissioned by the Democracy Defense Project also found broad support for various existing features of Ohio’s elections – such as bipartisan, local administration, secured, tamper-proof voting machines and ballots, online absentee ballot tracking and pre-loading of completed absentee ballots to ensure a faster result.
In questions posed to voters, though, the policies were described as proposals that would increase security rather than stating that they’re already in place, which they are.
Robert Blizzard, a Republican pollster who conducted the survey, said he thinks Ohio’s election system is viewed relatively favorably in part because voters are more likely to trust things that are closer to them. But, he also said it’s because Ohio’s elections haven’t been the objects of national controversy during recent presidential elections.
“I think Ohioans are a little more proud, more confident in how their elections are being held and counted,” Blizzard said.
What is the Democracy Defense Project?
The Democracy Defense Project is a multi-state initiative that aims to promote voter confidence in elections. It has bipartisan, state-level leadership and operates in five top-tier presidential swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — as well as in New Hampshire and Ohio, which this year has a hotly contested U.S. Senate race.
In Ohio, the group’s leaders are Ken Blackwell, a former Republican secretary of state who is a political ally of former president Donald Trump, and Zach Space, a former Democratic congressman from Tuscarawas County. The group, which hasn’t disclosed its financial supporters, hired Blizzard to poll likely Ohio voters from Sept. 18 to 21 to ask them about how they view the security of the upcoming election. It sampled 600 likely voters using cell phones, landlines and text messaging.
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Democrats and Republicans view the integrity of upcoming election differently
Unsurprisingly, the poll found a sharp partisan divide. Republican voters have been influenced by Trump’s repeated false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, claims that have been rejected by Trump’s justice and homeland security departments and by dozens of local and federal courts. Some Republicans also have raised more mundane voting concerns about the 2020 election, such as with the board shift toward mail voting because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The poll found that 58% of Republicans were “not at all” convinced that the national election count would be accurate, compared to 38% of independent voters and 5 percent of Democrats. Republicans also were much more likely to describe election workers as “more political than you think.”
What Ohio voters say are their top election concerns
Voters were asked to rank their top concerns. Scoring highest for Republicans was that people who immigrated to the United States illegally would be allowed to vote. This helps shed light on why Republicans have pursued laws in Ohio aimed at screening out undocumented immigrants, even though documented voter fraud is exceptionally rare. For independents, the top concern was media organizations selectively promoting some news stories while exaggerating others. And for Democrats, it was elections falsehoods being spread through realistic, AI-generated videos and photos.
But there were areas of agreement. The same concern about the media ranked second for Republicans and third for Democrats. And the AI issue ranked fifth for Republicans and second for independents. Blizzard said that, to him, this showed that “there’s more consensus than you think” about election integrity, giving the parties’ leaders competing narratives on the prevalence of voter fraud.
The poll also found bipartisan paranoia that broadly seemed directed at the other side, but not always:
- Ninety-five percent of Trump voters described themselves as “extremely concerned” about voting irregularities affecting the election, but so did 41% of Kamala Harris voters. Around 90% of both Trump and Harris voters said they were concerned about the other side engaging in “improper ballot activities” that could affect the election, while nearly 60% of independent voters described being concerned about both major presidential campaigns doing so.
- 23% of Republicans – a significant minority – said they were concerned about the Trump campaign engaging in irregularities, while 11% of Democrats said so about the Harris campaign.