COLUMBUS, Ohio — Secretary of State Frank LaRose once served his country as a Green Beret overseas — now he uses that training for what he says is the most important “no-fail” mission of his career: safeguarding American elections.
The 45-year-old GOP officer told The Post failure on Election Day “was not an option,” and despite brawls, hackers and at least one death, the ballots were all counted — and counted fast.
Ohio was called for Donald Trump at just 9:08 p.m.. Polls closed at 7:30 p.m.
“We have over 3,200 polling locations with over 35,000 election officials helping to staff,” LaRose explained. “We were tested but we were ready. I had reports of a fistfight and brawls breaking out. We had a bomb scare that turned out to just be a kid’s backpack. And we even got the horrible report that someone committed suicide by jumping off a building and landing directly in front of a polling location. Awful. And it showed why crisis readiness matters and why the last four years of preparation have mattered as well.”
LaRose did not say exactly where this took place out of respect for the deceased, but did confirm “local authorities were able to respond with lightning speed” to resolve the situation and notify the family.
“I learned pretty quickly in my first couple of months in this office that there were a lot of studies, three-ring binders full of studies about this and that,” he told The Post. “But I told my team, ‘We don’t need another study, we need execution.’”
For LaRose, pursuing perfection within that execution is an “ongoing” process that never truly stops. He and his team have spent the last four years checking in with every precinct, charging every radio, and even asking ethical hackers to take a stab at their online security.
“I’ve become kind of obsessed with and know for cybersecurity in elections,” LaRose told The Post. “If you go to our website, we ask people to attack us. We want to know where our vulnerabilities are. When we find them, we fix them. Fast.”
LaRose says he was taught to think through and solve problems like this extremely during his combat career in Iraq.
“When a Special Forces team prepares for a mission, it’s not some Hollywood montage of like, grabbing guns and jumping and grabbing traps to go get the bad guys. It’s not nearly that exciting. Actually, it’s hours and hours at the dry erase board and just brainstorming everything that could go to crap. Then it’s more hours and more hours making sure that it doesn’t. If there’s one thing you can’t replace on a battlefield, it’s preparation.”
On election night, that preparation equaled speed.
LaRose says that efficiency was achieved by both his department’s own preparedness and a remarkable pivot towards early voting in the Buckeye State.
Ohio cast more than 2.5 million early ballots in 2024, with Republicans contributing about 250,000 more than Democrats.
That total is up big from the 1.8 million early votes cast in 2016. LaRose says the COVID election in 2020, which saw more than 3 million early voters, “taught” Ohio the value and convenience of early voting.
But it taught the Republican Party something as well.
“If the other side votes for four weeks and we vote exclusively on one day, just do the math. That doesn’t turn out well for us,” LaRose told The Post. “If you’re a football coach, you know that you can score points by running, kicking or passing. And so, as a party, you can score votes through early voting, absentee voting or Election Day voting. They’re all secure.”
Some LaRose detractors have accused him of being too strict and suppressing voter turnout. But he says, “If that’s the case, I’m doing a demonstrably bad job. I presided over the largest turnout elections in Ohio history.”
Ohio cast nearly 6 million total votes in 2020 and in 2024 it was just below at around 5,585,000 ballots.
If that’s a football team, you just might have a shot at the playoffs.