‘Blatant act of intimidation’: Trump raid on Ohio voter registration group spurs chorus of outrage

Members of Congress, national democracy advocates and local leaders denounced the Trump administration’s massive law enforcement operation against a voter registration group in Ohio.

Several officials Friday called the FBI raids against the Ohio Organizing Collaborative (OOC), which helps register voters and organizes political events for Democratic and progressive causes, an attempt to intimidate voters ahead of key midterm races in the state.

“This egregious federal overreach is another example of coordinated efforts to suppress voting rights and voter registration, and it amounts to an unprecedented attack on our democracy,” Rep. Emilia Strong Sykes (D-Ohio) said in a statement.

Allison Russo, an Ohio state representative and the Democratic nominee for secretary of state, called the raids “a blatant act of intimidation.”

“Our federal law enforcement should never be weaponized as a tool of political retribution against organizations that organize and educate Ohio voters, especially when that work is focused in communities that are often shut out from policy decisions that impact their lives,” Russo added.

In addition to raiding OOC’s offices across Ohio Thursday, an OOC board member told media outlets that federal agents searched the homes of several of the group’s leaders and staff members. 

The board member added that the broad search — which may have involved over 100 federal agents — appeared to be part of an ongoing fraud-related investigation into the organization.

The raids were the Trump administration’s latest hostile actions against efforts to help Americans register to vote, which is required to cast a ballot in all states except North Dakota.

Earlier this month, the administration proposed a new regulation that, if implemented, would bar using federal grants to help voters register or inform them how to register.

While funds for those efforts likely do not exist, the proposal has created confusion and concern among nonprofits that use nonfederal funds for voter registration work, according to Nonprofit VOTE.

The Department of Justice argued in court this week that the Trump administration or private anti-voting groups should be allowed to pressure states to purge specific voters from registration lists — thereby denying them the ability to vote — right before elections. 

Former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), whose campaign against incumbent Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio) could help Democrats regain control of the Senate this November, said the raids were “a transparent attempt at silencing Ohioans and their ability to vote in free and fair elections.”

“Federal law enforcement should never try to intimidate eligible voters from exercising their right to participate in democracy,” Brown said.

Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb (D) said he was “deeply troubled” by the raids.

“Encouraging eligible citizens to register to vote is not wrongdoing. Community engagement is not wrongdoing. Civil engagement is not wrongdoing,” Bibb said.

OOC has offices in all major metropolitan areas in Ohio, including Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. Alongside its voter registration work, OOC also advocates for low-income communities, criminal justice reform and racial justice.

In 2021, OOC also challenged the GOP gerrymander in the state, arguing it reduced Black voters’ representation.

The Brennan Center for Justice, which represented OOC and others in that suit, denounced the raids as “an outrageous fishing expedition” and “an attempt to intimidate people working for democracy.”

“It is an egregious abuse of law enforcement for political ends, and it fits a pattern of federal inquiries targeting voting infrastructure ahead of the midterm elections,” the center added.

Michael McNulty, a former elections advisor for the federal government who is now the policy director for the pro-democracy group Issue One, suggested the searches fit “with a troubling pattern of an election takeover playbook that we’ve seen across the country.” 

He said the Trump administration was “abusing the power of the executive branch to intimidate and attack the very people and institutions that administer and support elections.” 

Benjamin McKean, a political science professor at Ohio State University, said he was alarmed that the FBI would target what is, “for lack of a better phrase, a completely normal NGO.”

“For the FBI to raid them — and people who are just associated with them – is a serious attack on ordinary civil society and almost certainly an effort to influence Ohio’s midterm elections,” McKean said. 

He added that the Trump administration may run “the ACORN playbook” against OOC, referring to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a community group that conducted large-scale voter registration drives in the U.S. for decades.

In the late 2000s, Republicans at the local, state and federal levels challenged ACORN’s efforts to help low- and middle-income Americans register to vote, claiming that portions of the people it registered did not exist or were not eligible to vote.

Republicans’ challenges against ACORN significantly ramped up after the 2008 election, when the GOP falsely concluded that the group stole the race from then-Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain.

After individual ACORN canvassers and officials were charged with falsifying voter registration forms, the GOP aggressively attacked the organization as a whole. The group was eventually forced to fold.