More than one year from the 2026 midterms, and without any evidence of extensive voter fraud, President Donald Trump said Monday he wants states to dump the machines used to electronically record and calculate votes.
In a post to his own Truth Social platform, Trump said voting machines have been 鈥渉ighly inaccurate鈥� and 鈥渟eriously controversial.鈥�
Although the 88 counties in Ohio own and use different machines, every county has an either entirely electronic system or some combination of electronic tabulation with a paper ballot or paper audit trail, according to Secretary of State Frank LaRose鈥檚 office.
Counties had to opt in as many as 20 years ago to begin using the machines.
But just last week, LaRose killed an effort in two rural Ohio counties to move away from them. Residents of Monroe and Seneca Counties circulated petitions to put an issue on the ballot, asking voters whether those counties should now opt out.
Members of county boards of elections 鈥渋n theory鈥� could vote as the board on the issue, LaRose said, but he ruled that current law wouldn鈥檛 allow the issue to go directly before voters. And either way, he said in an interview Thursday he thinks it would be a bad decision.
鈥淚f you exclusively hand-counted ballots, it would be less secure, because right now what we have is a redundant process鈥攚here they鈥檙e counted electronically for that result on election night, and then they鈥檙e counted as part of post-election audits by hand,鈥� he said.
LaRose said he believes it would cause weekslong delays in results, and that it could create room for further error. 鈥淛ust hand-counting something tends to yield an accuracy rate in the 97%, 98% range,鈥� he said.
But far-right figures in Ohio have also denounced LaRose鈥檚 decision, arguing that it should be decided on directly by voters.
Marcell Strbich is running for LaRose鈥檚 job in 2026, since LaRose is term-limited. Strbich wants to go back to an entirely paper system, he said in an interview Monday.
鈥淚t is a question of security risks and vulnerability, so I would not look at this from the lens of what is the existing fraud,鈥� he said of voting machines.
A spokesperson for LaRose, when asked Monday, said the secretary was 鈥渃ontinuing to have productive conversations with the president鈥檚 team, and they鈥檝e consistently pointed to Ohio as a national model for other states to follow.鈥�
