Voter Fraud Billboards in Ohio Target Minorities

<a href="https://twitter.com/ClevelandWard5/status/253842398055116801/photo/1/large">Phyllis Cleveland</a>/Twitter

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In Ohio, possibly the decisive swing state in this year’s presidential race, 10 billboard ads around Cleveland warn in big block letters and exclamation points that voter fraud is a felony punishable by up to three and a half years in jail and a $10,000 fine.

That might seem like an odd way to spend election-year advertising money, given that in-person voter fraud is less common than UFO sightings. Yet evidence suggests that the creators of the billboards, who identify themselves only as a “private family foundation,” care less about voter fraud per se than scaring away certain voters from the polls.

In 2008, nearly 70 percent of voters in the county that includes Cleveland cast ballots for Barack Obama. While that on its own might suggest a partisan motivation behind the billboards, a closer examination of their locations indicates something worse: a calculated effort to target Democratic-leaning racial and ethnic minorities.

In this map of Cleveland, created by Eric Fischer using 2010 census data, each dot represents 25 residents. Red dots are Caucasians, blue dots are African Americans, orange dots are Hispanics, green dots are Asians, and yellow dots are members of other racial and ethnic groups. I’ve added stars to indicate the locations of the billboards. As you can see, all of the stars are in areas that are either mostly black, or, in the case of the inset, significantly black, Asian, and Hispanic:

Location of "VOTER FRAUD IS A FELONY!" billbords in Cleveland Eric Fischer/Josh HarkinsonLocation of “VOTER FRAUD IS A FELONY!” billboards in Cleveland Eric Fischer/Josh Harkinson

“When you have the words ‘felony,’ ‘voter,’ and ‘fine’ all the the same message, and by placing it where it is, the only message that you are intending to send is that this is a threat to you if you vote,” Cleveland Councilwoman Phyllis Cleveland told the Plain Dealer (see video below). “It’s just a blatant attempt to keep people in this community, particularly black people and poor people, from voting.”

UPDATE: Readers report seeing the same billboards in Madisonville, Ohio (a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Cincinnati) and in Oak Creek and Souuth Milwaukee, blue-collar areas in Wisconsin.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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