After Ohio’s attorney general charged a dead man with voter fraud, Cuyahoga County officials are accusing him of playing politics before the election. We obtained documents showing the beginning of a communication breakdown.

It was quite a week last week for Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.

“We’re talking about the non-citizen vote today,” Yost said during a news conference Tuesday.

During his event, the AG boasted of six counts of voter fraud from previous elections. Each has a green card holder who would have voted in the previous election.

Three were from Northeast Ohio, and the remaining three were from the Columbus area. All were legal permanent residents – or green card holders.

That investigation stems from the summer when Ohio Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose complained to Yost that local prosecutors were not taking up his team’s possible voter fraud referrals.

Of the six people indicted, one was a 68-year-old North Royalton man who allegedly voted in 2014, 2016 and 2018.

“You will be held accountable to the state of Ohio,” Yost said.

As it turns out, that voter died two years ago. However, Yost accused him.

“This is one of the greatest examples of prosecutorial overreach that I have ever witnessed,” Cuyahoga County District Attorney Michael O’Malley said in a statement Wednesday. “The practice of blaming the deceased is draconian.”

“This is not how we would have handled this case in my office,” O’Malley said. “I am calling on Ohio Attorney General David Yost to immediately dismiss this indictment.”

Once Yost’s team learned of the death, they told us they would “of course” dismiss the charges. On Friday, I asked LaRose how that could have happened.

“Well, you know, really, that’s a question for the district attorney, because why did it take so long that he didn’t pursue this case and we had to send it to the attorney general?” LaRose replied.

Cuyahoga County continued to strongly deny that it had a referral for the case, but I obtained some records from the AG’s office.

In a March 25, 2020, journal entry, a special agent with the Bureau of Criminal Investigation wrote that he had sent “completed investigative reports” related to the alleged voter to the former Cuyahoga County Assistant District Attorney for review.

“No further investigative efforts are necessary at this time,” the agent wrote.

At the top of the log, it marks the case as “closed”.

We followed up with Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office spokeswoman Lexi Bauer. The team was not available for an interview, but provided us with information whenever we reached out during the week.

“We searched our case management system and we have no record of the case,” Bauer wrote to me.

In an earlier text, she said they “can’t talk about why he was locked up in theirs.”

She added that their assistant prosecutor left the office in early 2023.

“We have prosecuted several cases of voter fraud brought to us by the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, including one this week,” she said. “We work with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office on a daily basis. If there was a problem with this case, it was never brought to the attention of our office.”

I have asked the AG’s office for any documentation showing direct communication between their office and Cuyahoga County or a letter from the county declining prosecution. The spokesperson said they are working on our requests.

Bauer, however, raised a point that several officials in other counties have raised — the timing is “suspicious.”

“We can only speculate why this issue arose two weeks before Election Day, but it appears to be politically motivated,” Bauer said. “An honest prosecution of this matter would have included an investigation which would have quickly revealed that (the individual) died two years ago. Obviously, this investigation was not completed prior to the grand jury presentation.”

Atiba Ellis, Case Western Reserve University’s nonpartisan election law professor, was stunned by the indictment’s revelation. He also questioned the timing and control of both Yost and LaRose.

“This seems more geared towards trying to prove evidence where the evidence was thin,” Ellis added. “By indicting a deceased person, it would at least raise the presumption that the attorney general’s office or the secretary of state’s office did not do due diligence to bring a proper indictment.”

What stood out during discussions with various agencies and election boards is that every county the Republican congressman and secretary have examined has Democratic prosecutors.

Of the living (that we know of) defendants, two were from Northeast Ohio. One was a 78-year-old woman from Hudson, Summit County, who would have voted in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. The other was a 32-year-old man from Kent, Portage County, who would have voted in 2016 and 2018.

The other three were based in the Columbus area. A 35-year-old man would have voted in 2008 and 2020; a 53-year-old woman would have voted in 2016 and 2020; and a 62-year-old woman allegedly voted in 2016 and 2018.

The Summit County indictment is listed as “secret,” meaning it is confidential.

“Under the Ohio Revised Code, it is improper for anyone to comment on a secret indictment until the defendant is in custody or in court,” said Summit County Prosecutor’s Office spokesman James Pollack.

It’s unclear how Yost managed to break the news on Tuesday, before the individual was in custody or in court.

The Portage County Prosecutor’s Office never responded to repeated requests.

The Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office, which has an outside public relations firm handling its communications, said the cases were indeed filed.

“The office has reviewed the cases and has taken the decision not to prosecute them further,” the PR team said.

I asked the spokesperson why they didn’t prosecute.

“Right now, they don’t want to share those reasons,” was the response I got.

In all, Yost pointed out, six possible fraudulent voters out of 8 million registered voters is a tiny amount — and proves that Ohio does not have widespread voter fraud.

“Voting irregularities like these are rare… We should all be confident in future elections that the laws are being enforced, will continue to be enforced,” the AG said.

Follow WEWS state reporter Morgan Trau on X and Facebook.

This article was originally published on News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ articles, this one is not available for free republishing by other news outlets because it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland.