A man, who identified himself as Director of Warren County Board of Elections, verbally abused “Mandy”* on Sunday and threatened her saying she is under investigation by the Secretary of State. He said if it was up to him she would never work the polls again. Mandy has multiple sclerosis and walks with a cane.
SUNDAY-“See something, say something” was a top priority and the first lesson taught when Mandy went for Voting Location Manager training. But when Mandy did say something, she ultimately got threatened by the Director of the Board of Elections (BOE).
Yesterday we published an article reporting that Polling Election Officials disappeared from the list at a BOE.
Mandy was assigned a different precinct yesterday and her name restored to the list. After the Secretary of State was notified, Brian Katz, Director of Public Integrity at the SoS, called Mandy. Katz said they had no other reports of PEOs disappearing but he would look in to it.
Mandy thought the issue was resolved until today when she received a call from Brian Sleeth, Director of Elections at the Warren County BOE. Mandy said Sleeth was rude and condescending to her while reading an email as though Mandy was responsible for it. Sleeth had others on the call and a lady kept screaming at Mandy as Mandy was trying to interrupt Sleeth and tell him that she knew nothing about the email he was reading. Sleeth accused Mandy of saying that the entire PEO list had disappeared. OPS can confirm that Mandy had only told them that several “other Republican Polling Election Officials (PEO) were also missing.”
Sleeth told Mandy if it was up to him, she would never work the polls again. He also threatened her by telling her she was under investigation by the SoS office for disinformation, election fraud, and other things.
When Mandy told Sleeth that she had a good talk with Katz yesterday, his tone changed immediately and while still rude, he stopped threatening her.
This leaves many questions. Was a Director of a BOE using the SoS office to threaten a Poll Worker? On what basis? Does the SoS conduct investigations into people who report concerns? If so, on what basis?
In yesterday’s article we linked the legal requirements for being a PEO. We want to know if the Ohio SoS and/or Boards of Election are discriminating and denying people their right to participate in the elections process based on party, age, ideology, gender, race, disability, or for reporting concerns.
Mandy has multiple sclerosis and walks with a cane. She was left badly shaken by having a group call from the Director accusing her of something she did not do and threaten her, while she was trying to relax at home on a Sunday afternoon.
In yesterday’s article we also reported that OPS had received a report from a PEO that had been removed from working election day due to expressing concern about the security of machines in early 2021. The letter had been sent to the SoS but was used by the BOE as basis for removing her from the list of Poll Workers for Tuesday’s election. Why is the SoS and/or BOE discriminating based on a voter’s concern and questions about the election process? Isn’t that a conflict of interest?
We received another report today about a PEO being told she was not needed. Allegedly, they only needed three out of the four people that had signed up. Ohio law requires a 50/50 party split for most roles. How will they achieve that with only three people?
OPS is looking into whether or not these issues are exclusive to a specific party. We encourage people to reach out to the Secretary of State for answers to these concerning questions. You can find contact information for the SoS here.
*not her real name