Ohio treasurer looking to play musical chairs with statewide office spreads false election hysteria

Ohio’s state treasurer, Robert Sprague, is a term-limited Republican musical chair politician who hopes to grab another statewide seat for himself as secretary of state — if he gets past GOP primary challenger Marcell Strbich on May 5 to face either Democrat Bryan Hambley or Allison Russo in November.

To that end, Sprague recently dropped a campaign ad ahead of next week’s election that is highly revealing about the candidate’s fidelity to facts.

In a stroll past random brownstones, he walks up to a ballot drop box plunked next to a garbage can and asks, “seen one of these in your neighborhood?”

As Sesame Street-like graphics appear, an Oscar the Grouch rip-off named “Lefty the Cheat” pops out of the box.

Sprague declares “ballot boxes just aren’t secure” while the puppet agrees “they make elections messy!”

Sprague pledges “I’ll support President Trump. I’ll ditch the drop boxes. I’ll verify American citizenship for new voter registration” and ensure “cheaters get kicked to the curb.”

The state treasurer, who would be the state’s chief elections officer, signs off with “don’t let Democrats trash your vote.” 

Lot to unpack. But for starters, after seven years in a statewide office and four terms as a state rep, surely Sprague knows or should know the truth about ballot drop boxes in Ohio — which have been used for decades in red and blue states without controversy as a convenient way for voters to drop off their ballots without relying on the mail.

During the pandemic, ballot drop boxes understandably grew in popularity as an alternative to in-person voting.

But they inexplicably became a GOP target in the heat of 2020 politics.

Trump described them as a “voter security disaster” (with zero evidence) as he deliberately seeded unfounded doubt about voting in the run-up to the presidential election — the same way he is seeding corrosive distrust of election systems ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Republicans eager to align with Trump then and now, like Sprague, have likewise fueled misinformation about drop boxes as a source of widespread election fraud.

Never mind that after the 2020 election, states across the country told the Associated Press there were no cases of fraud, vandalism, or theft involving drop boxes that would have affected election outcomes.

Sprague knows or should know how incredibly secure and sturdy the roughly 1,000-pound steel ballot drop boxes actually are in Ohio — bolted to the ground, only one per county boards of election, with 24/7 surveillance under stringent bipartisan oversight. (So not exactly something you’d see in “your neighborhood” sharing the sidewalk with a trash can.)

Sprague also leans into the made-up GOP story of widespread noncitizen voting in U.S. elections in his ad — which he knows or should know is extremely rare and already illegal.

For years in Ohio, voters signed an affidavit, under penalty of perjury, to affirm their citizenship. The practice endured without incident (or massive voter fraud by noncitizens) until Trump and Co. began pushing the false claims of hordes of noncitizens voting despite all evidence to the contrary.

Finally, Sprague manifests the rank partisanship he would bring to the job as a supposedly impartial administrator of free and fair state elections.

He tags his campaign ad with a word of caution (to presumably Ohioans across the political spectrum) not to “let Democrats trash your vote.”

Here’s a word of clarity to Ohio voters about who has held one-party rule over the state for roughly 26 of the last 33 years.

The Republican trifecta in both chambers of the state legislature and the governor’s office, as well as the Republican monopoly on every statewide office, wields absolute power over how, when and whether your vote counts or is trashed, (for noncompliance with never-ending GOP voting restrictions) or is purged without notice in more frequently conducted cancellations of voter registrations.  

The overarching tell of Sprague’s ad is its soft allegiance to hard truths.

It’s the same dead giveaway exhibited by other Republican candidates (or administration nominees) in every non-answer they sputter when asked “who won the 2020 election?”

They either refuse to state the obvious, that Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden — by margins of 74 votes in the Electoral College and over 7 million votes in the national popular vote — (see Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno) or skirt a clear response on Trump’s exhaustively reviewed and repeatedly affirmed defeat (over 60 court challenges tossed as groundless) with some lame variation of “Joe Biden was certified as the winner of the 2020 election.”

The soulless apparatchiks obfuscate to pass a litmus test of loyalty to one man.

In the run-up to the 2024 election, JD Vance twisted himself into a pretzel when asked if Trump came up short in 2020: “So did Donald Trump lose the election? No. Not by the words I use.”

Refusing to follow the facts where they lead just to keep a convicted felon happy should be disqualifying on its face for anyone seeking public trust in elected office. But it isn’t.

Vance is vice-president. Moreno is a U.S. senator.

State treasurer Sprague could win his game of musical chairs in the fall and wind up running elections in Ohio.

Political loyalty has trumped fidelity to facts about the 2020 outcome, or the security of ballot drop boxes with fabricated narratives that try to obliterate truth.

But reality is not erased. And it must be boldly acknowledged.