Findlay Republican Robert Sprague served as a state lawmaker for eight years and is just finishing his second, four-year term as state treasurer. He’s now running to be secretary of state. Before his public service, he worked in the private sector as a consultant helping companies adopt accounting software.
Signal Ohio interviewed Sprague at the Ohio Republican Party headquarters in Columbus for about 45 minutes this month. What follows is an abridged version of the conversation, modestly edited for length and clarity.
To hear from his Democratic opponent, Rep. Allison Russo, check out her interview here. To learn more about the secretary of state’s office, check out this story.
Signal: You were in the House eight years. What did you accomplish while there?
Sprague: Well, we had an $8 billion budget deficit when I came in. By the time we left, we were having surpluses and we reduced the income tax by, I should know all these statistics, what did we do? I should have prepared for this. But I mean, we reduced the income tax. When I started we had seven brackets, and I think we’re down to a single flat tax.
We turned billions back to the taxpayers in the form of income tax cuts.
What years were you in the House?
I was there from 2010 until 2018.
So you were there when lawmakers passed Senate Bill 5, which limited collective bargaining rights of public employees, before voters overturned it. How’d you vote on that one?
I voted yes on SB 5.
How do you think of that now given the way the unions have come around to support Republicans in part, and vice versa?
It was a mistake. I made a mistake, but people do that. I was new. The vote was within two weeks of me getting into office.
You say it was a mistake, but it sounds like you’ve shifted with the way the Republican Party has shifted on labor?
Absolutely. Labor is not a problem. I think that they’re an asset in many cases. And I support labor, and labor supports me. So yeah, that was a mistake, but you own that. So you learn from it.
You’ve been in city office. You’ve been in the House for eight years. You’ve been in the treasurer’s office. Is this sort of just the next step on the ladder? Is this the job that you want, secretary of state?
What I want is to serve my state and my community. And I want good things for my state and my community.
The elections are important. They’re incredibly important. They’re the foundation, the bedrock of our representative democracy. So it absolutely is a job that I want.
And I think that in order to hold elections with integrity, you’ve got to hire people of integrity to hold those elections and run those elections.
In our state, we run elections right in the state of Ohio. So I’m not running to burn down the secretary of state’s office, but I think there’s some things that we can do to build it up.
I’m running on photo ID. I want to make sure that our elections are secure and that they’re fair and that they’re transparent and that people can trust them.
You say running on photo ID. What does that mean? We already have a photo ID law.
I think it’s the biggest issue. Yeah, we have photo ID for in-person voting. It needs to be added for our mail-in ballots. It’s not anti-voter. It’s not voter suppression. That’s what the Democrats all said when it was on the floor of the House two years ago.
We voted with in-person photo ID now for the last two years in the state of Ohio. Not a single American has been disenfranchised because of that. And my opponent, Allison Russo, she voted against that on the floor of the House. It’s the biggest difference between us.
Well, that’s not true that no one’s been disenfranchised. People have come in and they vote provisionally for lack of voter ID. They indicate that on their provisional ballots. They don’t cure them. It’s a number tracked by the secretary of state, of would-be votes that aren’t counted. Isn’t that someone being disenfranchised?
Not at all. You’ve got to follow the rules. You’ve got to follow the rules.
The bar is very, very low. It’s just that you have to show that you are who you say you are. People show their driver’s license. Over 98% of the people show their driver’s license. If you don’t have a photo ID, we’ll give you one for free.
So it’s not an undue burden. It’s just a rule that we make sure that people are who they say they are. If we’re going to require a photo ID in the state of Ohio to buy a beer or to fly in an airplane or to get into the Riffe Center up to Allison Russo’s offices, we should have photo ID for the elections in the state of Ohio.
(Roughly 7,000 provisional ballots cast in 2024 were not counted for lack of ID, state voting data shows.)
What problem does it solve? What is the risk that is mitigated by requiring a photo ID?
So what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to create a system where during the registration process you go through, “Is this person an American citizen?” So we should have upfront citizenship checks. That’s another big difference between me and my opponent. Something else that she voted against on the floor of the House.
I want to have an upfront citizenship to make sure that when people are registering that they’re an American citizen and then we check for their residency and then we check for either of their criteria like being over the age of 18, right?
So during the registration process, we want to make sure that you meet the criteria. During the voting process, we are simply checking that – is this person who they say they are, and are they allowed to vote and are they a sovereign American citizen or Ohio citizen? So that’s the process, and you want to make sure that people are who they say they are and they’re not gaming the system.
What do you think about early voting? Should we keep early voting?
I think early voting is great. People love it. It doesn’t present a security hazard. It’s great. We need to keep it exactly the way it is. A lot of people like to vote early.
Do you support drop boxes at elections boards?
Those things are awful. They’re completely unnecessary. The only people that it helps are the political operatives who want to do ballot harvesting in the state of Ohio.
So everybody’s seen a video of people stuffing multiple ballots into a drop box. We have laws against ballot harvesting in the state of Ohio. You can’t enforce those laws if you have drop boxes and people are allowed, political operatives in particular, to collect ballots, vote those ballots and then stuff them into the drop boxes after hours, without knowing that people are who they say they are, so we can’t enforce the laws.
And here’s the thing. The ballot drop boxes right now are all at the boards of elections. So there’s no difference between you putting your ballot in the drop box versus walking the extra 20 feet and handing it to somebody at the board of elections.
Do you think that currently exists with drop boxes in Ohio?
I do.
These drop boxes are on the board of elections property. They’re under 24/7 surveillance.
That’s not the problem. The problem is not people taking ballots out of the drop boxes. It’s who’s putting them in.
You can’t let these political operatives go and collect other people’s ballots and then submit them through the drop boxes.
Is this happening in the hypothetical?
It happens everywhere in the United States.
Has it been documented happening in Ohio?
Yes.
And, you know, and it’s honestly common practice in other states, you know. So, places like California, it’s the way they run their elections. It’s just a part of what they do. And everybody accepts that that’s OK. I don’t think it’s OK. We pass laws against it, and I want to make sure those laws are enforced.
(When pressed for specifics, a campaign spokesperson provided a media report detailing allegations that nursing home workers delivered ballots to a Summit County drop box on behalf of their patients, and Cuyahoga County meeting minutes detailing an episode in which a self-described community organizer delivered a bulk set of ballots to a drop box in March 2020 from neighbors who couldn’t leave their home during the pandemic. The minutes state there “was no indication of fraud or other inappropriate conduct.”)
The Heritage Foundation has, they have a little search function. They’ve rounded up instances of election fraud. They found 63 cases between 2000 and 2026. What do you think when you hear that number?
I don’t know what the Heritage Foundation is doing. But what I can tell you is that voter fraud is, there’s not a lot of it, but it’s real. And it does happen.
And if you want more of it to happen, simply look the other way and make our elections like California or New Jersey.
…
So that’s the first problem. And then the second problem is we have elections in Ohio that are determined by a single vote or tie. And so, you know, if you’re canceling out the vote of valid American citizens when you allow people to illegally register, whoever they are, and vote in our elections, it disenfranchises American citizens and it impacts the outcome of our elections in Ohio.
It might be a school levy. It might be a township trustee race, but we also have state rep races that have been decided by five votes. It undermines the will of the voter.
I hear you that most adults can get a free ID and use it to vote. But what about the people that, for whatever reason, are not availing themselves of the options available and their votes aren’t counted? They should get an ID, they ultimately don’t, so they can’t vote when they’re otherwise eligible. What about them?
Here’s one thing I’m going to do to address that.
We are going to create a brand new division within the secretary of state’s office when I’m secretary of state because I don’t want a single American to be disenfranchised. And so if you have a problem locating a photo ID, call our voter advocacy director and they will help you find it.
All right, we will help you find the documentation. If you’re a valid American citizen, we will help you be able to cast your vote. It is your right. It’s one of your highest rights. This is not a Democrat issue or a Republican issue. It’s an American issue.
And I want you to be able to vote, and I want your voice to be heard. So the idea here is we’re running on secure elections. We’re not trying to drive people away. We simply want to know that people are who they say they are when they show up to vote.
Do you think the Republican rhetoric around supposed election fraud, and the policy attempts to cut into that through things like voter ID and citizenship verification checks, add to that environment of mistrust?
Not at all. What we’re trying to do is mitigate the distrust, mitigate the fraud, make sure that people understand what’s happening. And as the next secretary of state, I’m going to be completely transparent. When we make mistakes, people get registered illegally, we’ll tell the public about that.
Even if they vote illegally, we’ll tell the public about that. We want to keep the numbers small.
Do you believe Donald Trump won the 2020 election?
Look, Joe Biden won. He was president for four years. Everybody knows that.
Do you think he rightfully won the election? Do you think there was a fair counting of the votes that led to Joe Biden assuming the powers of the president?
Look, I don’t know what happened. I’m not the secretary of state in all those other states. I know we did it right here in the State of Ohio.
As secretary of state, you’d be on the redistricting commission. How do you think that process went? How do you think that process has gone since Ohio changed its constitution?
I think that, early on, the process was bad. It created outcomes that both parties weren’t in favor of, but in the last redistricting, my opponent, Allison Russo, voted in favor of those maps. And so it had bipartisan, unanimous support.
I think that was the point. It was a forced compromise. Republicans didn’t get everything they wanted. The Democrats didn’t get everything they wanted. They met somewhere in the middle that everybody could live with. That’s the legislative process, and I think that’s the best process that you can hope for when it comes to something that is drawing inherently politically sensitive lines.
Do you think Ohio should revisit that constitutional amendment?
No.
Why not? It’s an interesting answer.
Because, like, we just proved that the system works. It forced compromise. If you don’t, if you have like this other weird external system where random people that will all be political are appointed to draw the district, you’ll end up with a much more political outcome than what we have right now, which is a compromise.
What do you think of the 2024 ballot language that Democrats say was misleading and written to steer voters to a certain direction? Do you agree with that?
No, I don’t. I think people are smart. I think people read these issues. And, you know, I think that’s just a partisan opinion from the Democrats because they didn’t like the result of the outcome or the election which they lost or their idea lost.
You know, the failsafe of the Ohio Ballot Board, which the secretary of state chairs, you know, is the court system and is the Supreme Court. And they sent that ballot language to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court said, I think with a few changes to it, that it was OK.
My understanding is that you and Russo have not agreed to a debate. Correct me if I’m wrong.
I agreed to a debate.
Yeah?
Yeah, Spectrum News called us and said, you know, we would like to have a debate. They gave us kind of, like some basic, like, whatever standard. I don’t even know what they were – debate criteria – and I said, OK, sure.
And Allison Russo gave some other answers about how she couldn’t do it.
Do you think that Trump’s popularity has weakened in Ohio?
Not according to what I witnessed [at an Oct. 3 rally]. When he was down in Dayton, the energy was through the roof. The whole Republican ticket was there. I think he has a unique ability to get, like, Trump voters out to the polls, and I think that’ll be important in the November election.
I read the campaign’s release yesterday about the DOJ’s probe of Russo’s consulting firm. Why should people know or care?
Well, I think they should care because, you know, this type of fraud where they create a formula that overcharges for veterans’ healthcare benefits by $300 million is what makes our healthcare cost so expensive.
And then they didn’t tell anybody about it. They didn’t tell the government about it. They didn’t come clean and tell the government about it.
That’s why they, I think, why they had to pay us out. So if you’re in leadership in that type of organization, I think it calls into question, you know, are you going to be transparent with people, with secretary of state?
And do you really care about affordability if you’re doing that to veterans’ benefits?
I’m horrendously out of order, but I forgot to ask. I heard you tell WEWS’ Morgan Trau that you want to make Election Day a holiday?
Yeah, you know, I think that we don’t need to have 30 days of early voting and also Election Day being a holiday.
I think a better solution, which is part, which is what I feel like we need to do on a go-forward basis, is to require photo ID for the mail-in ballot.
So, no Election Day holiday?
I mean, I like the idea of Election Day being a holiday. I think it’d be great.
But I don’t feel like it’s integral for election security. It’s just not a big piece of my platform.
You know, if you’re trying to get people’s votes, everyone would like another holiday. We would all like a day off.
Well, maybe it should be a bigger piece of my election platform.
Campaign spokesman Rob Nichols: State Signals, excuse you.
That’s my free political advice for the campaign.