Ohio Secretary of State Frank Laros, Cuyahoga County Election Commission Director Tony Peratti, and Cuyahoga County Election Commission Deputy Director Anthony Kellogg spoke at a press conference on Monday to review the November 2 election . (Seth A. Richardson/cleveland.com)

Cleveland, Ohio-Ohio Secretary of State Frank Laros said on Monday that the legislature should revise the amendments to the election law signed in July. Some prosecutors and voter rights activists are concerned that election officials cooperate with outside organizations to conduct voter outreach. And registration.

The new law is designed to prevent election officials from collecting money from private groups in 2020, like Republican La Ross has collected from Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg). LaRos said he agreed to ban private funding in the Ohio elections, but believed that the legislature had gone too far in adding a clause prohibiting election officials from cooperating with other groups.

During a visit to the Cuyahoga County Election Commission, Laros said: "Unfortunately, I hope that the General Assembly will cooperate with us on the details of the language."

County Election Commissions usually work with parties and non-partisan private groups to carry out daily activities such as voter registration and recruitment of voting staff for election day. But prosecutors questioned Ohio’s Attorney General Dave Yost last week whether the new law would make it a misdemeanor to work with groups to achieve these goals—and possibly even provide police officers with security when transporting ballots. The behavior is criminalized.

"I think the language they drafted may be a bit inelegant, and that's where they prohibit any form of cooperation," Laros said. "Again, they made it clear to me—the General Assembly has—that they have no intention of prohibiting the normal type of cooperation that every secretary of state does."

Laros said that state legislators should re-enact new legislation to make it clearer what is allowed and what is not allowed.

He said: "You can use a clear way to explain that funds-private funds-are forbidden." "But working with organizations is a very different thing. This is every secretary of state-Republican or Democratic. ——Things that have been done. Even as simple as a group calling us and saying, "Hey, we want to do voter registration activities," we will give them a box of voter registration forms."

The new bill was introduced after the 2020 election. With the support of the legislature through the control committee, LaRos accepted a $1.1 million grant from Zuckerberg through the Chicago Center for Technology and Civic Life to help ease the election period and the election. Related expenses. Pandemic. LaRose said that most of the funds-often referred to as "Zuckerbucks"-are used for daily expenses, such as personal protective equipment that has already been purchased.

Nonetheless, the money—or, more precisely, its source—has aroused enough suspicion among Republicans that they passed a bill prohibiting election officials from using private funds to pay election-related expenses.

Laros said on Monday that he did not tell county election officials to stop day-to-day work with the team, but said they should seek legal guidance from the county attorney.

"Again, the legislative leaders who passed the bill told me that they had no intention of prohibiting us from normal community participation as usual," Laros said. "The binding legal advice on what the committee should or shouldn’t do comes from the county attorney, but I didn’t tell them to stop voter registration activities, for example, because this is a basic and indispensable part of the election committee. Part of the voter registration activities."

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