Ohio's Republican secretary of state calls Trump's rigged election claims 'irresponsible'

Ohio’s Republican secretary of state has a message for Donald Trump: “I am in charge of elections in Ohio, and they're not going to be rigged.”

The Manhattan billionaire has ramped up in recent days his claims that November’s presidential election will be stolen from him, allegations that are largely not founded in factual evidence. Jon Husted, who will oversee Ohio’s elections as its secretary of state, called such talk “irresponsible.”


“First of all, I can reassure Donald Trump: I am in charge of elections in Ohio, and they're not going to be rigged. I'll make sure of that,” he told CNN on Monday morning. “Our institutions, like our election system, is one of the bedrocks of American democracy. We should not question it or the legitimacy of it. It works very well. In places like Ohio, we make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.”

“We have a bipartisan system of elections. Frankly, it's the only place you can find Democrats and Republicans working cooperatively together,” he said. “They work that way in our election system to make sure that the integrity of our election system is upheld, and that people feel good about the process of voting.”

Ohio is one of a handful of states considered essential for Trump if he is to win the White House. No Republican has ever won a presidential election without winning the state, and the Manhattan billionaire’s relatively narrow path to victory in the Electoral College makes Ohio, where his message has resonated with white, working-class voters, even more crucial.

Although the state is a must-have for the GOP nominee, he has feuded loudly and often with Ohio’s Republican leadership. Gov. John Kasich, the last Republican candidate to drop out of the GOP primary, has refused to endorse Trump and did not attend the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, a move that prompted then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort to accuse Kasich of “embarrassing his state.”

And on Saturday, Trump’s campaign cut ties with Matt Borges, the chairman of Ohio’s Republican Party, who had repeatedly criticized the real estate mogul. Taken together with the Trump campaign’s most recent wave of controversy concerning allegations of sexual assault against the GOP nominee, Ohio has drifted from a seemingly safe state for the Republican ticket back into toss-up territory.

As Trump’s numbers in Ohio and elsewhere slip, his claims that the fix will be in on Election Day have grown louder and more frequent. Husted said they are unfounded.

“The idea of widespread voter fraud would require some systemic problem in our system, and so if there's a systemic problem, please identify it. Don't just make an allegation on Twitter. Tell me, tell the secretaries of state around the country what the problem is so that we can fix it,” Husted said. “But right now we're not aware of any systemic problems in our voting system. Are there cases of voter fraud? Absolutely, there are cases of voter fraud. But it's rare, and we catch these people. Most times we catch them before their vote is even counted. And we hold them accountable. And we're building the better system every single day.”